Help major knee prob docs CLUELESS!!!!

[Dominoe]

Hi new here found you guys through yahoo researching my knee prob. Not sports related unfortunately
60lb metal door fell on my left knee 10 months ago
I have had arthroscopic surgery and an EMG doc's don't know what's wrong! My knee is still swelling my leg is pins and needles from my toes to my upper thigh ther is severe pain when I bend walk too long or drive my standard, climing stairs is very painful and sometimes the pain in my knee is enough to make me nauseous. Am doing minor stretch exercises and doing what I can and what I can't( mother of two teenagers) so my life can't really stop because of this! New doc says MAYBE it's neuropraxia and that it will heal on it's own but won't give me guesstimate of how long. None of the painkillers work except the amptytrypline they gave me which knocks me on my butt for 12 hrs. Since Oct my left hand up to my elbow has been pins and needles like my leg and they can't tell me why. Any advice or diagnosis would be appreciated I have seen 6 docs and 1 specialist and none of them know why I am in pain
Lost a really good job over this so am pretty frustrated
Any help would be appreciated'
Thanx

[Vinman]

I got your PM and decided I would respond here to maybe spur some discussion and input from a few other maggots with more expertise in this area (paging Mrs. Roo, paging Mrs. Roo and maybe crinkle).

While the intial injury sounds like it could have been related to a neuropraxia, 10 months is a long time and the neuro symptoms in other areas don't really fit. But there is a condition called Reflex Sympathetic Dystrophy Syndrome (RSD) - also known as Complex Regional Pain Syndrome (CRPS) - is a chronic neurological syndrome characterized by:

severe burning pain
pathological changes in bone and skin
excessive sweating
tissue swelling
extreme sensitivity to touch.

This is knind of a shot in the dark but maybe check this out to see if your symptoms fit.

http://www.rsds.org/2/what_is_rsd_crps/index.html

good luck and post back here if you have more questions. Mrs. Roo would know much more about this than I do.

[Big E]

Yikes, that sounds terrible. I'm not a doc, nor do I play one on the 'net, but my advice would be to start trying to find the best doc possible. I know that sounds obvious, but the fact is that not all the docs can be the best. It may just be that you haven't found one that specializes in whatever it is you have. I'm not sure where you're located, or if it's a big city or small town, but you might want to locate the closest top-notch medical center within a few hundred miles.

Just speaking from experience, I can think of about 4 people that are friends of my parents (and in one case my mom) who had some sort of medical problem that lingered for a long time while a doc tried to figure it out. Living in the Baltimore region, at my folks urging they eventually went to see the various specialists from Johns Hopkins, and within a month each one of them had been diagnosed and put on the road to recovery. In one case, the doc actually said that she may not have had another month to wait.

[FollowMe]

No medical professional knowledge here, but I can empathize with some of your pain. Try to keep a good attitude - - I think that helps. Good luck.

[Mrs Roo]

Sorry, a bit slow on the uptake for this one.

Neuropraxia CAN take a long time to heal depending on how far up the nerve the damage occurred. The nerve will regrow by 1mm a day, and the nerves in the legs are long. Our pain receptors are what we call 'small fibre' neurones and our touch receptors are large fibre (responsible for the pins and needles). The diagnosis of neuropraxia has probably been guided by the pins and needles symptoms but would not explain the pain. The pain you describe doesn't follow the distribution of the sensory nerve below the injury which could support Vinman's idea of RSD, in view of continued swelling etc. Have they done any nerve conduction studies (again these would check out the large fibre neurones and not explain the pain)?

When is the pain worse? How often and when do you take the pain killers? There are other drugs for neurogenic pain that you may have already tried that are not as harsh as amptytrypline. Management of the pain seems a priority no matter what the cause is. The cause doesn't appear to be cut and dried as is often the way with chronic pain.
You could try finding a good pain management team or pain management programme to help you with this distressing symptom. The teams here in the UK tend to use a combination of drug and physical therapies as well as general management. If it is RSD, they would be able to manage that as well.

Good luck. I hope this is of help.

[Dominoe]

Sorry, a bit slow on the uptake for this one.

Neuropraxia CAN take a long time to heal depending on how far up the nerve the damage occurred. The nerve will regrow by 1mm a day, and the nerves in the legs are long. Our pain receptors are what we call 'small fibre' neurones and our touch receptors are large fibre (responsible for the pins and needles). The diagnosis of neuropraxia has probably been guided by the pins and needles symptoms but would not explain the pain. The pain you describe doesn't follow the distribution of the sensory nerve below the injury which could support Vinman's idea of RSD, in view of continued swelling etc. Have they done any nerve conduction studies (again these would check out the large fibre neurones and not explain the pain)?

When is the pain worse? How often and when do you take the pain killers? There are other drugs for neurogenic pain that you may have already tried that are not as harsh as amptytrypline. Management of the pain seems a priority no matter what the cause is. The cause doesn't appear to be cut and dried as is often the way with chronic pain.
You could try finding a good pain management team or pain management programme to help you with this distressing symptom. The teams here in the UK tend to use a combination of drug and physical therapies as well as general management. If it is RSD, they would be able to manage that as well.

Good luck. I hope this is of help.

AHH I was taking a lot of pain killers but one of my friends is a nurse and she threatened me if I didn't stop so I'm not taking anything the amptytripline? knocks me out so I limit my intake
The doctor won't let me go to the gym or do any physio cause he fels I will damage it more GREAT!!!! Then they'd have to fix it right???
The lawyer and the doc are still talking trauma induced MS so I'm a little scared This RSDSA that Vin was talkin about sounds similiar but I'm not sure I have all the symptoms for that I'll have to do some more reading on that
But Thanx Again for the advice and Ideas
Still Clueless
Dominoe

[0BernhardFranz]

ask my ma maybe :
dr.s.franz@t-online.de

[0BernhardFranz]

i heard my ma talk much about that stuff interconnections between organs and so on like how does the knee affect the arm etc.