back into the knee brace

Dec 20, 2015

Soooo, I am back in my knee brace. I don’t know what I did to reinjure my knee, but it is pretty darn sore. It got hurt a little bit and became more unstable back on October 30 when I faceplanted on my front cement and tore the cartilage in my wrist, but it didn’t really hurt tons just a little bit. So we have been taping it to give it some suppport, but it wasn’t bothering me a whole lot and I wasn’t worried about it.

Then on December 10th I held our Closing Social for my Liberty Girls group and something, though I have no idea what, happened. As I was straightening up the house that morning, a sharp, take my breath away pain began to shoot through my knee. It felt like a serrated edge of a glass crowbar was prying my patella off. Oh my goodness, the pain. It took everything I had to get through the Liberty Girls tea party and then I laid down for the rest of the day trying to rest it.

The next day, I was told it looked like the meniscus was torn. A few days later when I saw Jeremy he said the meniscus had a new tear and the LCL was retorn as well and I needed to go back into my knee brace that I wore from December to the end of June. We talked about surgery and he said (once again!) that I am not a good candidate for surgical repair because it will just happen again and again due to my hypermobility. He explained how the menisci work and that in a normal person, they sit in between the tibia and femur helping them fit together and providing cushioning between the two bones. They generally move 6-12 mm during various movements. Instead of moving this small amount, Jeremy says my menisci are bobsledding within my knee joint, sliding all over the place and often getting trapped in places they shouldn’t be and subsequently being torn. So, unless we can fix the hypermobility, it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to surgically repair it.

His explanation makes sense and I am super duper grateful for his honest and thorough assessments. But, boy howdy, it is hard to hear that the last resort of surgery isn’t a last resort at all. It is no resort at all as it isn’t an option. The options are to live with it or to figure out a way to have Prolozone injections to try to tighten up the ligaments and heal the cartilage like I did with my hip. Unfortunately, my nervous system is so hypersensitive now, there is a pretty big question as to whether my body can handle the injections.

My body didn’t like any of the nine series of Prolozone injections I received back in 2012. It became more and more sensitive to the ingredients until my nervous system was so damaged that at the final injection in January 2013, I collapsed in the office and began walking the road of passing out/seizures/autonomic dysfunction which is probably my biggest challenge now as eating and breathing challenges, temperature control, vomiting, shaking and passing out are such a pain to deal with. So even though the injections worked by helping the labrum heal and bring more stability to my hip, I am left damaged in other ways. Part of me thinks the risk is worth it and part of me is terrified at the very thought of trying the injections again.

Back in April, I received a stem cell injection in my knee and it made an immediate, dramatic improvement. We did it without any of the local anesthetics my body has so many problems with (hurt like CRAZY!) and only injected my own cells, spun and separated, back into me. That was at a specialty clinic in Mexico and if I could do that again, I absolutely would, but at this time it isn’t really an option. If I could find someone in my area that would do stem cell injections that would be lovely, but as far as I know, there isn’t. Plus the cost of stem cell stuff is exorbitant in the U.S. and fairly cheap in Mexico, so I don’t even know if I did find someone in the Rocky Mountain area if we could afford it. I’m not really sure of exact prices, but I was told the same injections I had in Mexico that cost about $100 would be $2000 here in the States, ARGH.

On top of the knee issues, my wrist is in a brace, my arm aches due to both the wrist injury and some entrapped nerves which are causing all sorts of pain and electrical activity. It is called Thoracic Outlet Syndrome and I am hoping all the nerve gliding work Jeremy is doing will fix it quickly. Also, I am having lots of episodes…this week, Tuesday and Wednesday had full episodes and Saturday night and Sunday during church I had some shaking, so we really need to be focused on figuring out how to calm down my nervous system so I can stop having episodes. That most likely means meeting with Dr. Fraser Henderson in Maryland so we can figure out if my brain stem is being compressed and causing all the crazy nervous system dysfunction or not, but in order to schedule an appointment I have to submit a geneticist’s report and the current wait on a genetics appointment at the University of Utah is 14 months…soooo, it is all up in the air and I don’t really know what is the right path to pursue.

In spite of all this, I am doing well. I am spiritually and emotionally in good places. We are having a lovely Christmas season with lots of reading of Christmas books and snuggles in our Christmas quilts from last year. We are trying to spread joy in little ways and not spending lots of time out and about as my knee and the rest of me just can’t take it. Each night we share a story from Jesus’s life, read one of our Christmas books aloud and then listen to about fifteen minutes of The Christmas Carol (if you want it on audio, this version is fantastic!). So, I am not posting this because anything is really wrong or because I am ready to throw in the towel, just as an update and a record so I can remember how I was doing in December 2015, haha!