Difference between tough and dumb?

[Crock]

I suffered a bad ACL tear back in December, but have put off surgery 'till June because I'm a full-time student out of state, and want to do the surgery near my home. Well obviously 4 months later, and my knee has been pretty strong. I've done running, some light-duty hiking, and mountain biking these past couple weeks in an effort to lose the extra weight I gained this winter.

Yesterday i was playing basketball with some little kids. I jumped up for a rebound and came down crookedly on my bad knee. It completely buckled under me. I drove home in tons of pain, started icing it, but it just blew up the size of a grapefruit. I've kept it elevated, and iced it 20min on/off since 6pm last night. it's now 10:40am, and hasn't gotten any better. It's only stiffened up to the point where i cant bear my weight on it. I have a meeting with my surgeon on monday to evaluate my knee and schedule the surgery. It's also nearing the end of the semester, and I have tons of work to do this weekend-but i'm in a ton of pain, and can't walk on it. I'm using my crutches again.

So decision time. Is it dumb, or tough to stick it out 'till monday? or should i go see someone today?

[philippeR]

Are you kidding ? Go, now. If it's full of blood or synovia, you may need some decompression.

[Crock]

Good knee:

bad knee:

[Mofro261]

Sounds like you tore the meniscus and it's caught,or did some other damage.

Since real docs always trump internet docs, you may want to go have that loooked at.

In all likelihood though, he/she will do an xray to look for fractures and do a manual manipulation to find any points of pain. Without an MRI it's unlikely you'll get a clear picture of what more is wrong in there. If you can't get in to see the doc until Monday just keep the ice/compression/elevation going, take 600mg's Ibu 3x daily and unfortunately use those crutches to get around until Monday.

FWIW, I've been getting by w/o and ACL since Jan and have surgery sched. May 9th, and I'm pretty sure I messed something up a bit more last Sunday since the knee feels much more unstable and the burning sensation doesn't go away. No swelling or loss of joint mobililty for me, but damn it's not as happy as it was.

[awake1563]

Get a knee brace and splint it in position, Rest, Ice Compression, and Elevation, along with the aforementioned regimen of Vitamin I. Not being able to bear any weight seems a little odd to me... don't test it, theyll definitely look for some fractures, but as long as you're not moving that knee you shouldn't do any further damage... No weight bearing, and Immobilized! and you'll be fine till monday... But what do I know, don't listen to me

[skibuminwyo]

Owie..... Painful memories. I dunno, I would probably be heading into the ER in the good old days, but, since I have no insurance now, I'd wait to get the opinion of the old buddy doctor when he was there and I could slip in the back door. Choice is yours, definitely keep up with the RICE.

[Woodlandclown]

eww..probably wont make much of a difference if you wait til monday, although i realize that my advice is too late anyway. unfortunately, if you did further damage your knee, they probably will not know until they go in there. I was not aware that i have done some meniscus damage until they were in there fixing the acl. i took some risks while waiting for surgery myself, and i could have done further damage to my knee, who knows. I do know that the meniscus sucks to get repaired--requires you to be on crutches and minimal weight bearing for abot 6 weeks. that is unless you are a patient of dr marks--the only dr in the world that lets you walk rght away.

[Crock]

Thanks for the advice guys. The pain was pretty awful today, but I got some tylenol with codeine and that helped a little bit. Enough for me to tolerate some compression, which really helped with the swelling. It's reduced by probably 2/3's now, but still quite swollen. I'm getting some percocet tomorrow, which should help get me through 'til monday. I'm still about a month away from surgery, so if the doc suggests another MRI to see if I did further damage, then so be it. I just didn't want to have to pay for the ER visit. Even though I'm on my parents insurance, it's still not free.