That is the direct quote I told to Dr. Schmitt (Ortho at Tria) when I went to see her this last Monday! Back up a little bit to the beginning of March!
We were in Florida (more on that in future posts) the Cocoa Beach area at one of our favorite AirBNB’s. Dick and his daughter, Jennifer, flew out to join us so they could get away from the MN cold and snow. We picked one of the days to go to NASA and also reserved the extra bus tour which we have tried the last 2 times we have been there, but the bus tour was sold out. We would so glad that we could finally get on the tour. I had to book it a week in advance to guarantee our spots.
I am still using my cane for the left knee and had it along at the NASA tour. Before we got on the bus we probably did about 2 hours of walking. Getting on the bus, we only had to get on and off a few times, but the stairs were hard on my “bad” leg but I soon noticed that my “good” knee was beginning to have pain. After the bus tour, we walked another couple of hours. The next day it was difficult to put much weight on the “good” knee so I was cautious. Getting up and down from a sitting position was really painful with a stinging pain radiating along the middle of my knee cap. We still had a few days in Cocoa Beach and then heading back to MN via WI to visit everyone there. Sitting in the car probably did not help, but I tried to get out and stretch a little with each stop.
We arrived home on Sunday, March 16th. The pain in that knee was pretty bad. But I decided I would wait a few days to take any steps to see someone to see if it would get better on its own. I iced the area, did stretching without any improvement and getting up from a sitting position was almost unbearable! So I decided to try to see the Ortho Doc that I saw when I broke that small bone in my “good” leg. I really liked her, was a great listener and so positive. She has regular appointments along with rotating through the Tria Urgent Care.
Got an appointment to see her the following Monday. When she walked in she said “oh no, what is going on?” That is when I said I was running out of knees! 🙂 She examined me and took x-rays. Thankfully no breaks or tears, but she definitely feels I am facing arthritis in that knee area: “Moderate medial patellofemoral joint space narrowing”. She said there were 2 paths that we could go…one to get an MRI to see if there was a better view of exactly what was going on or two start with some medication that they are seeing great success with when addressing arthritis issues for 14 days and then come back if not better.
So we choose that 2nd option to start the meds (Diclofenic) and see how that goes. I will say after taking that for a few days, at least the shooting pain along my knee cap seems to have subsided and standing up from a sitting position is not as painful. So it seems that the meds are doing their job. I also need some PT, which I have set up appointments to start that next week. So I will have PT for both the “good” and the “bad” knee area. 🙂
Florida was great to get away. And I am sure I overdid the walking at NASA and probably still baby the bad leg somewhat that probably results in bad walking practices. I will certainly share that with the PT so we can make sure that I am not continuing to use bad walking habits.
The next few posts will be an overview of our Florida trip. I did not want to post while we were gone and advertise that we were not home. 🙂 And I really want to write the posts to help remember where we stayed, what we saw and some of the activities we enjoyed for our next trip.
Hope you are all doing good! Stay safe and smile at someone new today!
Dandy Ventures 