Friday, was the first day I had stepped out of the house for 12 days. Fast-forward, I’m coming on leaps and bounds the last few days, I’m so relieved. I was a bit worried there for a short while!
A couple of weeks ago (see video above), I went to meet a friend in town for some coffee and a catch-up. As I walked back home, my left leg was getting unusually sore, so much so I began to limp and a mile later, as I turned into my road, I felt a “pop” followed by a terrible pain. I could no longer weight bare on my left leg at all. I simply could not move…
Luckily, I pulled my phone out, asked my girls to bring my hiking pole, and with the assistance of my family I was able to very slowly get home (30 minutes for 50 metres). It was so bad I couldn’t get up the stairs to use the loo so we brought in my camping toilet, bunged in a black bag and some guinea pig wood shavings so I could pee!
It was obvious something was amiss so my eldest and I ordered a taxi and visited urgent care. It was all rather embarrassing being pushed around in a wheelchair but within a couple of hours I’d been checked, x-rayed, given crutches and was ready to go home (thank you NHS).
Likely exacerbated by my recent Parkrun, the x-ray revealed quite a lot of Osteoarthritis. I suspected as much as I’ve been living with a lot of knee pain for a few years now but have always been “too busy” to go and get it checked out. However, the sudden severe pain, according to the hospital, was probably caused by a Bakers Cyst or a Medial Collateral Ligament stretch/tear which didn’t show on the x-ray.
The advice was to keep my leg raised, ice it regularly, take painkillers and anti-inflammatories, make an appointment with the physio and once the swelling started going down, look on the NHS website for leg/knee exercises I could do in my bed.
The first 4 days were very painful but things began to really improve at day 7. I’m now able to sit at my desk without too much leg pain, walk with just one crutch outside. My knee still hurts so taking a bit of weight off it helps but also if I twist my left knee I get a lot of pain and it gives away so having the crutch is kind of a bit of security right now! I even drove my car yesterday for a very short drive.
All in all, things are now healing well, the swelling has gone down and I have an appointment with my physio soon and I’m doing all the exercises I should, twice a day. Tomorrow I return to physical work (although I only had 1 day off sick and have been working from my bed). I will drive to work instead of my normal walk and hopefully in the next week or two I can return to walking those daily two miles again!
My takeaway from all of this is
- Reducing my weight to under 200 lbs is now more important than ever to help ease my knee pain
- I can’t imagine a life without long walks out in nature so I have to take my healing slowly and sensibly and probably face the fact that perhaps I shouldn’t aim for another Parkrun until I reach my weight goal!
Thank you for all your support during the last couple of weeks, I really appreciate it and I’m not going to take mobility for granted going forward. I feel I am very lucky to have that and need to preserve it.
Much love, C xxxx