Knee advice...i did a bad thing.

[rightcoast]

My knee is worked. i landed a jump a little funky, kind of all my weight on my left leg, and twisting forward.
it didnt really feel like anything when i did it, then on the chair, it started to bother me.
now i cant put full weight on it...the pain is under and below my kneecap, more on the outside.
i cant really straighten my leg out all the way.
whats up? just a tweak?

[ulty_guy]

hopefully?

all the best w/ it.

[Vinman]

RC,

kind of tough to tell from the description you gave. A couple questions.

IS there any sweling and if so where?

Can you find any areas that are painful to the touch?

Any strange sensations during the injury or after like clicking, locking, catching, popping?

Were you able to continue skiing after?

Any previous injury to that knee?

[rightcoast]

A little swelling right below and to the left of the patella(its my left leg) Hurts when i touch there also.
The thing thats freaking me out the most is not being able to straighten it. I did keep skiing on it. No prior injury to it.
Theres no wierd popping or anything..maybe a little pinch when i bend my knee up past 45 degrees.

[Vinman]

Without being able to see your knee it is knid of difficult to tell. But you seem to have at least some knowledge of anatomy so lets try this.

Is the painful area on or below the joint line of the knee? The joint line is basically where the tibia and femur come together. To find the joint line, start at the lower tip of your patella and slide your fingers into the depression/groove that you can feel there. Now move them to the outside and you can still feel a groove. Is the pain located in/on that groove or someplace else?

Next is the pain on the lateral collateral lig. (LCL). To find the LCL cross you legs in a figure 4 so that your left ankle is resting on your right knee. Now find the joint line again. About 1/2 way around the joint line you should feel a small band of tissue about the width of a pencil. this is your LCL, touch the LCL over its length to check for pain.

Ok try that and get back to me.

[splat]

Door hinge.

[rightcoast]

Originally posted by splat
Door hinge.

perfect!! now wheres the damn link to the thread to guide me through the installation??

[splat]

Originally posted by rightcoast
perfect!! now wheres the damn link to the thread to guide me through the installation??

Tech Talk. Be careful on the part about making the hinge flush with the surface.

[altagirl]

Not being able to straighten it all of the sudden sounds like exactly what happened when I tore my meniscus. It could be something else but if it's still stable, maybe it's not a torn ligament.

Fingers crossed it's nothing but a mild strain or something.

[rightcoast]

the meniscus thing is what scares me.
ive gotten that response from several people now...

[Castro's]

Sounds exactly like when I tore my meniscus. The meniscus tear really isn't all that bad. Get an MRI right away, and if it is torn depending on how bad the tear you might be skiing in 3-4 weeks if all goes well. I have a few friends who play soccer and were back on the field a week after surgery.

I went in for my surgery and ended up not skiing for 3 months. My meniscus tear was minor, but I had a major bone bruise that took 8 months to completely heal after surgery. Just hope you don't have that.

[badmigraine]

Odds are it's just a sprain or tweak. Really. Don't fret too much.

After an incident, the most troublesome thing of all is the Great Unknown. You just want to know how bad it is, and you want to know NOW...but in my experience, and that of my friends, these Mystery Conditions usually turn out to be solvable with simple rest and common sense care.

The knee is a very tough customer, but is packed with intricate parts, both fixed and moving. Once things start swelling or leaking out just a bit of fluid or blood due to bruise or thwack, well, the damn thing stops working right and every movement that does not reduce swelling or take pressure off bruised tissue makes it worse...a sort of cascading series of failures that create the illusion of a single big problem.

My sis had exactly your symptoms three weeks ago. I can still see her, sitting crying in the slush with her little margarita-filled CamelBack clutched in her hand, convinced her season was over. And what about those non-refundable Whistler tickets? It seemed like a disaster. She couldn't straighten the knee, was sure it was the meniscus and/or a ligament.

Well, it wasn't that. Just a tweak, a sprain, a boo-boo. A few days on crutches, some rest, some sensible biking therapy, then two weeks later she was getting air off an icy tabletop again.

And if it is the mensicus, you'll still be fine. I tore mine snowboarding the moguls at Naeba in Japan. Heard the "pop" and everything. I had some minor clicking and popping right away. The MRI showed a small tear. I lived with it for 2 years, it was totally manageable, nothing to report at all.

I had good insurance this year so I had it scoped and fixed. The result is fine but I almost wish I hadn't bothered because of the downtime in the summer, and the co-pays on the insurance.

No big deal. Don't worry. Hang in there. You'll be fine.