Finding A Doctor

The first doctor I went to after I hurt my knee was puzzled by my symptoms. 

Yes, my knee has swollen - but not too much. I was struggling to bend my knee properly though. Almost from the minute that I hurt my knee, I lost flexibility in it and the longer it went on the harder it got to bend my knee to any great degree.


Yes, my knee was hurting - but I couldn't exactly say where. I had two spots on my knee that seemed to have these round little lumps under them. Both of the lumps would pop out from under my knee cap or slide back under if I touched them. They were excruciating to touch - I almost passed out when I first pressed down hard on one.  

Other than that though, I was vague with my symptoms. My knee was aching and it hurt a little when I stepped on it- but nothing too bad. It felt a little tight and I didn't want to put my full weight on it because it...well...it just didn't feel right.

Doctor #1 said that she thought I'd possibly done something to the meniscus in my knee or that it was possibly a mild ACL strain. The fact that I had just woken up with my knee like this and that I couldn't remember hearing a snapping sound, meant that she really had no idea exactly what was wrong with me. She gave me anti-inflammatory pills, an X-ray referral and some pain killers and told me to take it easy for a week and then come back and see her.

The X-rays, when I got them, came back with a report that said that there was no sign or a break, fracture or dislocation. However, when I looked at the X-ray there was pretty obviously something wrong to me. There was a chunk missing from the bottom of my femur. The missing notch was pretty big too - it looked like it was at least as big as my thumbnail.

A week later (more than a week, if I'm honest) and I went to my normal doctor in West End, instead of the other doctor. My regular doctor didn't seem to think that it was an ACL injury and instead told me that it was possibly soft tissue damage or possibly some minor meniscus damage that should have healed up by now. He implied that I was making it up and that he didn't think there was anything wrong with me because my symptoms didn't match anything.

He referred me to Qscan for an CT-Scan and  told me to take it easy for a week and take some pain killers if I needed them.  I decided I needed a new doctor.

I went to get my CT scan and got told when I got there that although the CT scan would be bulk billed, it wasn't going to show any injuries that the doctor was looking for. They recommended I get an MRI, which would cost me $300. Unfortunately I couldn't afford it, so I went ahead and got the CT scan.


Luckily, the person who wrote the report for my scans was better than whoever wrote the X-ray report. They saw the chunk missing from my knee and several other bits floating around in my knee. They correctly stated that I had an OCD lesion in my knee and that there were several fragments floating freely in my knee.


When I went back to see a new doctor, she read the report and did some reading herself told me that I had an Osteochondral Defect in my knee - something which was quite rare in women of my age who don't engage in high impact sports. She explained that reason that the other doctors hadn't picked up on it was because OCD's usually happen to men who play sport  and was especially common in football players. 


There was nothing that she could do for me, she explained, other than give me more medication to handle the swelling and the pain. In the meantime, she gave me a referral to see an orthopedic surgeon and informed me that depending on how bad the lesion was, I would probably need at least one round of surgery to clear it up.


Not a happy start to my 2011.