Rob's Running Blog

An update on my knee injury.

Well, after my daffodil exploits were over, it was time to take stock and take serious steps to find out what’s going on with my leg. So I finally booked a trip to a sports injury specialist, pyhsiotherapist, call them what you will – we shall hereinafter refer to them as “physio” to save typing long words 🙂

To recap – prior to the Bolton 10k, I had a trapped nerve left shoulder, which was going away, then had bad lower back pain for 24 hours, which vanished, and then ran the Bolton 10k with no problems until the last k, where I started feeling pain in my groin area and had to limp to the finish line. After the race it was hard to walk with the pain, and the pain seemed to move down the thigh and into the knee subsequently, where it has remained ever since, apart from occasionally seeming to move back up to the groin…

So a month later, there is still some pain on walking, so I took myself off to the physio. I went in and gave him an account of what happened, and also explained that I have a long standing issue with that knee from when I was 21 – once, while playing cricket in a drunk state, with a crazily inappropriate action, my leg collapsed under me with a blaze of pain – and this happened several times, once when jumping over a wall, and in fact the worst time was actually just turning over in bed. I went to hospital, they X-rayed, etc. Didn’t have a clue. I went to my on campus doctor. Didn’t have a clue, so I left it… And every now and then the knee would still “lock” if it got nudged at the wrong angle, and I would have to really pull my heel back against my backside in order to “pop” it back into place.. When I started running I came across the concept of meniscus tears, and my symptoms seemed to fit 100% so I figured I have one of those… And was extremely worried upon hearing that untreated they can cause bad arthritis (NB I tried twice to get NHS treatment at the onset of the problem and it was not dealt with very cluefully, let’s say…)

In any case, my new friend the physio did some tests involving me moving my leg and placing pressure on different places, and did what he called a patellar apprehension test – and pointed out my leg was like rock, compared to the other one, as my brain was doing its utmost to prevent another episode of the “locked knee” problem. I wasn’t quite with him at the time, having been convinced for years I have a meniscus tear – but he said he was 95% sure it wasn’t a cartilage problem, ie not meniscus, as those seemed OK – but that I could keep dislocating my knee cap – eek! He also said that my current issue could be caused by some kind of scraping of the knee cap, which is solveable… Anyway, he then did an ultrasound and I am due to go back in for the results and further instructions next week.

I looked up the knee cap displacement thing and it’s called patellar dislocation or possibly subluxation (not as severe as dislocation but can lead to it). It makes sense to me that this could be it, and looks like the symptons being similar to a layperson, it was easy to mistake for a meniscus type injury (especially the “locking” that was fixable by moving the joint/stretching/bending the knee). So looks like that could be it – and the current pain is possibly chondromalacia caused by something in there scraping together.

I guess what still worries me, until the ultrasound results – is that a) the injury had a very sudden onset rather than something that appeared as overuse over time b) I built up very slowly and at 15 miles a week was not doing very high mileage c) it’s stuck around for a long time now, after no running…

I guess I will just have to wait and leave it in the expert hands of my physio therapist, sports injury expert, medical type new friend and keep my fingers crossed he will be able to give me positive news and get me back running sooner or later. Even if it’s later, I’ll take that! 🙂