F-ed up my knee - symptoms of tendon/ligament tears

[Below Zero]

So I fucked up my left knee this past Wednesday. I banged my knees pretty hard on a rock. I think my knee pain is from the impact of my knee cap right on top of rock, but I'm not sure if I messed anything up. There isn't really alot of pain, and actually it is feeling better everyday. It does feel a little unstable right now though. If I did tear a tendon or ligament, would I definetly know it? Would there be some severe pain now or at the time of the accident?

[Snow Ranger]

I am def. no doc - however I believe if it tore completely you would have heard and or felt the pop. Severe pain for about 15 minutes then slowly the pain will decrease until you have almost no pain. The knee would feel unstable but as time passes will feel better and better and eventually you might think nothing is wrong until you try and make an aggressive cut and it will give out.

If it hurt when you did it and still hurts alot it could be a partial tear or something?

Hopefully it’s nothing...

[altagirl]

I've had a kneecap impact (mountain biking like 5 years ago) that left me sore for months - it didn't do any ligament damage - just crushed some of the cartilege on the underside of my kneecap. When it still hurt a month later, I had it x-rayed - no fractures, but they could see that I had squashed the cartilege by comparing the spacing on my knees. Treatment was just ice, elevation and rest. Not much else you can do. I don't remember it feeling unstable at all - just painful to any amount of pressure (even fabric resting on it). If you're feeling unstable, I'd get it checked out by a doc.

I didn't have any pain when I tore ligaments - just lots of swelling and then a little instability (only when cutting) when the swelling went down.

Hope it's nothing serious!

[Arno]

My personal experience of rupturing my ACL and giving my MCL a pretty good tweak was that with the former, there was a great deal of swelling and I was on crutches for 3 or 4 days. With the MCL, there was some swelling and I was skiing quite conservatively about 4 days later (I expect that a doctor would have advised against this but I didn't ask!).

I didn't feel a pop with either, although I know that is a very common indicator for the ACL at least.

[gorms]

My ACL tear was pain free. Didnt hear much over the rest of the carnage, but obvious stability problems. Tried to ski the rest of the run, nursed a couple of turns and then dropped for a teleturn and that was it. I fell like a bike without a kickstand and knew I was pretty fucted...

In my experience the swelling was the most noticable symptom. There was no definiton between my calf and thigh.

Best of luck...hope everthing is in tact

[smolakian]

Yeah my ACL tear was pretty pain free. I skiied the rest of the run and decided it would be wise to see a doctor before I messed up my knee any more. Wise decision because I ended up without any meniscus damage at all. That makes the surgury/rehab 10x easier I hear. So i'd be wise and have it checked out. You dont want to have to face arthritis when you are 40.