I don't know if i have ever written about my knees before so here is a post about my knees!
Although i still don't know what it means to go a day without my knees hurting then today my knees feel good and strong, but go back a few years and i was hurting so much. I had a few things going on - chondromalacia, fat pad impingement, and hypermobile subluxing lateral menisci. In short...:
Fat Pad Impingement: The infrapatellar fat pad is a fleshy part of tissue that acts as a shock absorber, it sits just below the patella. It contains a lot of nerve cells and when it gets impinged it means it is getting trapped between the femoral condyle and patella, and it kind of screams very loudly at you... (meaning it hurts alot!). It is mostly aggravated by extension of the knee joint.
Hypermobile Subluxing Lateral Menisci: The mensici moves further than it should do because it's ligamental attachments are rubbish/not there, sometimes it slides so far it moves totally out of place and the knee locks up, i would have to forcibly straighten it and 'clunk' it back into place. It is painful. It often made me cry.
I have had bad knees since i was about 12 but i just lived with it. My knees hurt when i did hills and stairs so i avoided hills and stairs. My knee would totally lock up where my menisci would sublux/displace itself and i would pop it back into place, and then get on with my day. When i was in gymnastics as a teen then I could tumble and jump with no problems but leglifts and bars would hurt my knees, no-one believed me and so i'd just take a lot of ibuprofen to get through each gym session. I went to doctors, physios, and no-one gave me anything that was useful/worked. I did all the exercises i could find but nothing worked. So i just lived with it. 2009 I went to Bikram yoga 3-4 times a week and it felt like it did something, then i moved to London and my yoga practice stalled because my then theatre schedule was unforgiving. My knees got super bad, to the point where i cried as they hurt alot, so i had surgery beginning Jan 2013, on both knees, where they removed inflamed fat pad, cleaned up the cartilage, and poked at my menisci to confirm they were hypermobile but they did nothing to resolve it. My knees still hurt, my knees still locked up. A new Bikram studio opened near my house, i popped along... I got committed to it and have had a regular almost daily practice for 1 1/2 years now since February 2013... my knees are improving, my knees HAVE NOT LOCKED since I began yoga again. This is so significant for me as they have been locking since I was 12 and they have never gone this long without locking, they don't even feel slidy. The general pain, well it's not as much as it used to be but the pain is still there, i just deal with it as best as i can and still avoid doing certain things.
I regret having the fat pad part chopped out, i'm not sure it helped, they took more out of the right knee and it is my right leg i struggle with more in yoga when doing one leg stands. I do definitely now notice a difference between both knees in pain and proprioception.
And that is the story of my knees...
