Just got back from Dr. O’Neill’s office, where I did a lot of sitting for 15 minutes of action. Turns out that the pain in my knee, and the random bump that has formed on my kneecap, is my knee trying to build new bone to compensate for the fact that it has been over-stressed. So it’s an overuse injury, and in response my knee is forming something like a bone spur, I guess:
“The reason for bone spur formation is the body is trying to increase the surface area of the joint to better distribute weight across a joint surface that has been damaged by arthritis or other conditions. Unfortunately, this is largely wasted effort by our body as the bone spur can become restrictive and painful.”
He checked my flexibility (which is great, no loss of range of motion or I would have noticed by now), gave me a few stretches to do, and did some x-rays which showed that despite the fact that the “knee lump” feels hard, it’s not actually bone yet. Just gunk that might eventually form bone. Anyway, for the next eight weeks whenever I do anything athletic (running and soccer, basically), I have a lovely little knee brace to wear with two tubes in it. One tube goes across the top of my kneecap, one right underneath it. It’s supposed to take some of the stress off my patellar ligament (the ligament that holds your kneecap in place). Then after 8 weeks I got back for him to see if the “knee lump” is fading/softening. If it is, that’s good, if it’s not, we’ll try something else.
So, the appointment was uneventful but hopefully I’ll now be on my way to getting rid of the knee ache. I had a good time at the doctor, as I usually do. I find orthopedics so interesting, and Dr. O’Neill is nice but moves very fast. I always want to stop him for ten minutes and start asking all sorts of knee questions just to satisfy my own curiosity. I don’t think I could do the doctor thing, but if I ever decide to change careers entirely, I think being a physical therapist would be very interesting and rewarding. You get all the knowledge and get to help people get better. But you don’t have to do the surgery thing. 😉
katie says
When Joel was in high school he started forming an extra bone in his bicep from hitting people in football. Weird extra-bone-former people. 😉