Bury My Sleep With Stupid Knee

I tweaked my left knee about four weeks ago. I don’t know how. All I know is that since then it’s been making its unhappiness with me known from time-to-time. The last few times when I went out to exercise the horse a couple of weeks ago I had to put on a sleeve so that I could run around the arena with him. Still, a few aspirin and a little rest and it was good to join in daily activities without much complaint.

During the past week or so I’ve noticed that it’s been causing me more and more discomfort. Wearing a sleeve has become an almost daily thing, and aspirin and I are renewing our past acquaintance. It wasn’t until last night that any of this was an issue. I spent most of the night waking up in pain when every time I moved as I tried to sleep, my knee would say the equivalent of: “Oh, no you di’n’t!”

It’s slightly vague at the moment, but it feels like I’m suffering a slight tear in my lateral collateral ligament (the band on the outside of the knee that helps keep it from moving side-to-side), with some slight interior tightness, though I’m not yet sure if it’s from my ACL or PCL.

Having suffered from knee pain all my life (it was a concern even when I was a toddler), this isn’t particularly novel, just annoying. Having popped the ACL in my right knee about eight years ago, I have a pretty good idea how badly a knee can screw itself up; fortunately, I’m not in that place now—it wasn’t fun.

CJ, many of you are positing, why don’t you just go to a doctor? Mostly it’s because I’ve never received any benefit from any of the co-pays I”ve had to shell out over the years when I did succumb to the nagging of the well-intended around me. Among the reasons for me taking the coursework to be a physical trainer —though I never took the certification exam—was to be able to deal with these little setbacks. I’m hopeful that a judicious use of anti-inflammatories combined with various therapeutic modalities will clear this up before too long. It’s annoying to be waking up almost all night long for this.