Knee update, five months in

PT, ice, repeat

Both my and my physical therapist’s schedule were weird this week so I went for my weekly appointment on Tuesday. I explained to her that it has been a bit more painful off and on lately, that it hurt more after a not-out-of-the-ordinary trainer ride on Saturday, and that the pain seems to have moved from the front of the joint to back inside the joint. We have been laying off most of my quad exercises at home, so that could explain why my patellar inflammation has calmed down. But why did the pain move to inside the joint?

She suspected my IT band and possibly my hamstring is tight to the point of putting pressure on the knee, so she stretched my legs in all these weird stretches. She even had me lie on my stomach and stretched out my quad by bending my knee until my foot touched my butt, which is the deepest my knee has been bent since November without locking up. Not going to lie, I was nervous, but I came out on the other side unscathed and my knee felt good enough to do all my PT moves with only a bit of discomfort here and there.

So my homework for at least the next week is to continue with my quad-free PT homework and add in foam rolling of my IT bands, especially the left side. I’m not surprised that it’s causing problems, as my orthopedist remarked on how tight my hamstrings and IT bands were when I first saw him in November. He initially thought my extreme knee pain and locking was probably just an inflamed IT band, which ticked me off because I thought he wasn’t taking me seriously. He probably wasn’t WRONG, it just turned out I had a chondral fissure as well.

Long story short: Five months later I am doing a bit better but still not back to normal. I'm not sure yet what my next steps are. It could be more PT, it could be going back to the orthopedist, it could be chicken cartilage. Who knows?