OK, anyone fancy making a diagnosis as I am not getting very far with the NHS sadly.
Last year I had the same problem with my knee that I mention below.
By accident I discovered if I wore walking sandles (fairly firm sole, lots of available foot movement) it caused me no knee problems, so last summer was issue free. This autumn it all reacurred again as soon as I moved back most of the time to winter footwear. I do quite a lot of walking on flat hardish surfaces, often 20-30 miles per week. I wear down the outside heel of my shoes quite fast and turn my foot in slightly as I walk. I asked for gait assessment from the health service but only got a cursory visual check. I have problems crossing the leg as it seems to pull on a muscle in my hip too much.
What happens:
Wearing trainers/softer soled winter shoes I start to get slightly odd sensations in my knee. Would not describe it as pain, only as some kind of grumbling/feeling wrong.
A couple of months or so back I was walking along on a very slight downward sloping pavement when out of the blue I got a searing but very very brief pain horizontally all through the middle of my joint. Think flash of lightening.
Immediately my knee destabilises - the inside feels loose a bit like the bones are sliding about a bit in an semi uncontrolled way. Standing on my knee is not painful in any way after the initial flash but feels kind of disgusting as it feels all wrong. I can only take tiny steps forward. Going down even moderately downhill slopes is unpleasant. Going uphill seems fine. It takes me half an hour to walk back to my car, a walk that normally takes 8 minutes. My knee has started clicking lots by the time I am part way back to the car.
The next day I am getting a sore spot on the inside of my knee at the joint but not in it. There is mild aching but not pain in the back of my knee. Very occasionally the whole area around the knee joint aches but not for long. The clicking however is persistant and the joint still feels like it is sliding about and I am left taking silly short steps as long ones just feel horrible and the knee slides about. I dont feel safe driving the car for several days.
Gradually over the next 3 weeks the clicking decreases and I feel I have more control over the knee, like something is repairing. If I wear trainers it deteriorates, if I wear walking shoes (like from Millets) it improves. Now a few months after the event the clicking never happens but now my heels are starting to hurt from wearing so many hard soled things so often.
The NHS physio observations on the problem:
- I have slight internal rotation of my leg and turn my foot sightly inwards (she says this has no relevance to the problem. She visually checked my walk (up and down the room once) and got me to do some frog jumps.From my personal experience,cycle pedals which do not allow much twist are a no no for me.
- That I have good symmetry
- My muscle tone/strength is good
- There is nothing wrong with my ligaments
- There is nothing wrong with my cartilage
- the searing pain immediately preceding the lameness and the knee clicking which started then are totally unrelated to what went wrong and they should just be ignored in any diagnosis.
- It is her belief I have arthritis.
The prev phsio last year claimed he could not find anything wrong (both times to be fair to the physios, its taken so long to get an appointment at the hospital that many of the symptoms are gone and I can only recount them).
The NHS wont refer me to anyone else or give me a scan as "you are not in enough pain". I am other than the lightening flash in no pain at all, its just I cant walk properly for weeks, on repeated occasions.
I could really do with some ideas of what could be wrong as until I have some idea I dont see how I can work towards avoiding or limiting repeats of this.
I am really concerned that mismanaging it now might mean the knee being really messed up when I am older. The only advice I have from the last physio is to walk lots and lots (which seems odd advice for damage she says is from joint wear and tear) to do lots of lunges (hard to do as the knee feels unstable and I am scared of setting it off again) and to come to terms with the fact that "everyone gets arthritis" which is not true as none of my older family that I know of have any knee or leg arthritis at all and most of them are in their 80's.
So, anyone care to take a guess - any starting point for me to look into is welcome.
