My (Unabridged) Story
Back when I was looking for information about knee pain, I logged onto forums and devoured other people’s personal stories. Most gave little snippets here and there, but I always wished they would start from the beginning and recount everything about their injury—how it happened, the treatments they got. Everything. That’s what you’ll get here: my entire story, unabridged. My first-ever blog posts told this story, but if you don’t feel like digging around (and, seriously, who does?) you can find all the gritty details on one page, here:
in the beginning…
Seven years ago, I was a starved-for-cash college kid on summer break. I nabbed a job at a local restaurant where I was forced to wear a white, button-down collared shirt and a tie every day. I felt like a quasi man, but that was OK because I was making plenty of cash working throughout the summer.
Back in those days, the restaurant was less classy than it is today. We didn’t carry plates in our hands—we brought an entire meal to the table on a wide brown tray. Sometimes, like when I’d serve a foursome of starving soccer moms, the tray was fairly light. But other times, I’d load my tray with two plates of roasted chicken and mashed potatoes, a pound of pasta drenched in cream sauce, a half-pound burger, and a side of fries. I’d heave the tray above my shoulder and dart through the sprawling restaurant like a flying saucer with feet.
Bad idea.
That’s because in those days I was a lanky 110-pound weakling without much muscle mass. Alright, alright—without any muscle mass. By summer’s end, I was limping through the restaurant by the second hour of my shift. My left knee would swell and ache and beg for mercy, but I didn’t listen to it. Bad move.
A week before I left for my sophomore year of college in Baltimore, I visited an orthopedic doctor who told me my flat feet forced my knees to roll inward and rub my thigh bones in all sorts of wrong ways. He diagnosed the problem as patella femoral stress syndrome, and handed me a sheet of paper with stick figures stretching in a half dozen ways. Do these exercises once a day until the pain goes away. Then build leg muscle strength. Easy, I thought.
I was a model patient … at first. I completed my physical therapy every night, wore a stretchy white knee brace beneath my clothes each day, and introduced myself to the gym. A few months after school started, I breathed a sigh of relief. I was cured.
when in rome…
The next two years of college went by without a hitch. I studied in New Zealand for six months and climbed mountains, scaled glaciers, bodyboarded down towering sand dunes, bungee jumped, sky dived, and navigated city streets without a hitch. Then, in 2004, I joined three friends for a monthlong European vacation to celebrate our graduation from college.
We flew into Prague, traveled to Florence, and then Venice, canvassing each city and hitting as many historic spots as we could in a day. Next came Rome. After walking throughout the Vatican, circling the Coliseum, climbing soaring cathedrals, and crisscrossing the city daily I felt a familiar ache in my left knee. I held a cold can of Coke over my knee, but soon I was forced to face the facts: My old pain had returned.
In Nice, France, I traded a trip to the beach for a day in the ER, where a kind doctor prescribed anti-inflammatories and some sort of French healing gel that took my swollen knee down a few sizes. Each night, I’d invest in a soda to ease the pain. By the time I reached Barcelona and Madrid, I was limping like a circus freak and taking breaks to sit every few minutes.
At home, my doctor prescribed more physical therapy—another sheet of stick figures doing leg lifts—and rest. I followed his orders (it’s easy to stay off your feet when you’re unemployed and living at your parents’ house) and recovered within a few months. I was healed.
ch-ch-ch-changes…
My knee pain returned more quickly the next time. I was working as an editor for a magazine in Philadelphia, rushing about in three-inch heels because that’s what you do when you write about fashion and beauty and style. I was working 11-hour days and chose dinner over the gym pretty much every night. So it wasn’t a surprise to me when my left knee started to ache. Then really ache. Then pulse with pain.
My primary care physician wrote me a prescription for physical therapy, and this time I got treatment from an actual human who examined my knee, taped it up twice a week, and taught me new exercises to build strength. Pretty soon I was doing crazy things like strapping a 3-pound weight to my leg and lifting it 15 times in a row. I was icing every night like my life depended on it. I even wore (gasp!) sneakers to work for a couple weeks.
I made another change that year: I went to a podiatrist to get custom orthotics. My doctor told me that the shoe inserts would compensate for the lack of arch in my feet, rolling my knee outward a bit to prevent the scraping that causes pain and inflammation. That sounded like a pretty good idea to me.
It took a couple months for me to realize two things: First, the orthotics helped my knee. Second, I hate shoe shopping.
Part II
This is the part where I get hurt (again), cry, hired a physical therapist, fight for my health, cry, and shop for a decent doc.
When I moved into my Washington, D.C.-area apartment in January 2009, there was a nagging pain in my left knee that I fought through in order to put away all of our dishes, shop for a couch, and color coordinate my closet. It was my commute—from Maryland to Virginia on the overly crowded metro—that forced my knee to give up on me.
The D.C. metro is a little slice of hell on earth with too few seats and too many riders for too many stops. There’s a lot of walking involved when you switch trains, and then there’s standing and waiting for the next train to come. There’s also—more often than my knee liked—a lot of standing during the trip. The people on the metro are little hellions who pretend not to notice when you limp on the train with a knee brace, search for a seat while fighting back tears, and settle for a spot on the ground. (I’m talking about you, able-bodied business man who made eye contact with me during one such trip before stuffing your face in a newspaper.)
Dr. Busy
I signed up for physical therapy in March even though I wouldn’t have insurance with my new job until mid-April. Each physical therapy session was $120 a pop, but I felt OK with that since I was strengthening my leg and (allegedly) healing my knee.
By the time I visited an orthopedic in the area, I had been making weekly physical therapy trips for a couple months. My knees (yep, the right one gave in, too) weren’t improving, so I pleaded for help. Dr. Busy took x-rays of my knee, then ordered an MRI. Both came back clean, so Dr. Busy told me it should heal up with physical therapy. I told Dr. Busy that I was having trouble walking the length of my 800-square-foot apartment and that my husband often had to pick me up from the couch and carry me to the kitchen.
“People with patella femoral pain typically don’t have problems walking or standing. Their pain usually happens when they run or climb stairs,” he said, furiously writing in my chart.
“Aha. Then why does it hurt me to walk and stand?” I asked as he sidled up to the door.
“I don’t think there’s anything more you can do but keep up with the physical therapy,” said Dr. Busy, turning the knob. “Alright? So, try that.” He was out the door.
That was the day I fired my doctor.
Dr. Kind
The second doctor I visited was a kind old man with a comforting smile and a love of analogies. He spent 30 minutes examining me, smiling, and explaining why my knees were like a pair of bad tires on a pretty good car. Dr. Kind ordered a round of steroids to suck the swelling from my barely bendable left knee, and made me feel better about the practice of medicine. Dr. Kind also made me feel better about my knees. After seven days of steroids, my knee had shrunken to half its size; my physical therapist asked if I lost a heckuva lot of weight. My pants fit again.
Dr. Hotshot
I visited Dr. Hotshot not because Dr. Kind scummed me or made a mistake, but because Dr. Kind specialized in shoulders, and I wanted a knee guy. Dr. Hotshot is a young orthopedic surgeon who treats professional athletes with injuries that need healing fast. I need healing fast, I thought, so I gave him a ring.
Dr. Hotshot said I had chondromalacia and needed physical therapy—stat. Since my knee had been so swollen, the physical therapy hadn’t worked to build any muscle. I went home, cried over my lack of progress, felt depressed about the money I threw away, then made an appointment with Dr. Hotshot’s favorite physical therapist.
Part III
Physical therapists are a lot like new mothers: They get excited over the teensiest feats. I got a congratulations when I learn to walk without a limp, lifted five pounds while doing an incline squat, or biked for 10 minutes without pain. Dr. Hotshot’s physical therapist did more for my knee than any doctor had before her. She showed me how to work the muscles that support the knee and used a cold laser to tame my knees’ inflammation and the painful Baker’s cysts that popped up just for fun. And she introduced me to the e-stim machine.
The electric stimulation machine looks like a contraption Jack Bauer would use on some suspected terrorist in order to save the world from total obliteration. Tell me where the bomb is! he would shout, sticking the four adhesive squares to the bad guy’s skin. I said, tell me! He would power up the device, and crank it to some crazy level like 15. People’s lives are on the line! he’d yell before the machine let out a series of zap-buzz-zaps. Once I got a unit of my own, I started zapping myself every night, sometimes for hours.
Things were going all perfect with physical therapy, and I really thought I was making headway, but I was wrong. According to my insurance company, my knee wasn’t healing fast enough. They wouldn’t pay for any more of my allotted physical therapy. (Shame on you, United HealthCare.)
I moped into Dr. Hotshot’s office for advice, but he admitted he didn’t have much say in whether I was making progress or not. Those insurance companies don’t like to ask the doctors. I paid for a few more physical therapy sessions out of pocket, but then I started to go broke so I went with Dr. Hotshot’s next idea: a cortisone injection. At the time, the cortisone injection was the most painful treatment I had experienced. I treated my left knee first to see if the magical liquid would work, but weeks after the injection I felt the same.
Dejected, I read up a treatment called prolotherapy, located someone in my area experienced in the treatment, and got two rounds of injections. That, at the time, was the most painful thing I had experienced.
When I didn’t notice a huge difference in my knee post-prolotherapy, my doctor suggested platelet-rich plasma (PRP) injections. At the end of July, I got the injections—the most painful thing I’ve ever experienced. (I’ve never given birth. So there.) My knee was worthless for a couple of weeks, and a month after I still couldn’t fully work out at the gym. But then a miracle happened. During week seven, I started to feel better.
I still have on and off days, but I believe the PRP is working. I hope. And that’s why I’m getting my second round of injections tomorrow.
Well, that’s my story—though it’s not over yet.
Here’s what I bet: Plenty of people have stories about their personal pain that can help newbies or longtime sufferers still looking for answers. What’s your story?
