chronic knee sweeling - no reason/injury
This is quite interesting.
I wasn't sure if anyone else was experiencing the health problems I've been dealing with for 6 years or so now. But I did a search and found out that there are a handful of people just from this site that have been experiencing the following:
-knee swells up for no reason
-doctor(s) claim its torn cartilage or just doesn't know
-have othroscopic surgery
-to the doctors dismay, your knee is completely fine
-blood tests prove nothing
-doctors suggest RA
while your knee continues to swell
and you get cortisone shots.
The one thing that is really dissapointing to me, is that I am 23 yrs old. And some of the other stories listed here are from people that are twice my age, but had it start at as young of an age as I am right now or earlier. I had just turned 17 going into my senior year of highschool. Didn't have any injury to my right knee, but it started to swell one day. I hobbled around for a week, and ignored what had just happened. A month later, it happened again, I visited the doc(s) and went through the process I mentioned above.
I went on a record run I believe, with the knee swelling/getting drained for about 6 times in about 2 months. I was sure I could link the chronic swelling to inactivity, since I was working an intership sitting on my butt all day and not getting much exercise. The swelling continued, not nearly as badly, but still every once in a while, all the way to my sophomore year at college.
One thing I'd like to find out is if anyone else is unfortunate as I am, and if this chronic swelling, RA, whatever it is, has anything to do with chrons disease. I was diagnosed with chrons after my junior year at college but at this time I had not had any swelling in my right knee in a long time. I have had occasional swelling in my right ankle, and was informed that there have been connections made with chrons disease and swelling on one half of the body. Well this all went to S@$% a few months ago when my left knee swelled up like my right knee had initially 6 years prior. Same identical situation. No injury, swells up over the course of 1 to 2 days to an enormous size where it becomes extremely painful to walk, and after a week of the torture it goes back down to normal size. This has happened now about 3 or 4 more times since Nov '02 but not quite as bad as the first time.
I'm dreading the day both knees and ankles are swollen and my chrons is acting up. I'm 23 years old, and I feel like I'm 80. Even this past summer I had very excrutiating back pains in my lower back to the point where it took me 10 minutes to get up out of bed and reach the bathroom the next room over.
When I'm not pinned down by this chronic hell I live with, I'm actually a very healthy kid on the exterior. I goto the gym at least a few times each week, and although not in a short while due to my knee, but I can even handle the impact of running on a tread mill. This type of exercise doesn't even seem to have a negative effect on my knee. I'm going to try swimming though instead to keep in shape.
I have an interesting diet, although I don't see any relation to the knee swelling and as far as my chrons it appears to be a positive thing. I'm a strict vegetarian (a vegan). So excluded from my diet are all and any animal product/by products. So milk, cheese, any dairy has not been in my metabolism in (irnoically, I'd like to think) 7 years, 1 year more than I have been dealing with the knee problems. I don't see how lack of meat in my diet would have any effects on something like this, since my diet is extremely healthy. I get plenty of protein, calcium, even B12, from vitamins.
Well, it is reassuring to know other people have the same problems. It's really irritating when people say to you, "hey, what'd you do to your knee?", and then they get to explain to you that knees don't just swell up for no reason.
Also if there isn't a doctor in this country that can explain this chronic illness, that obviously due to some of the stories, isn't something new, then I'd like to somehow have a tap surgically attached to my knees so I can just drain at will, that seemed to always do the trick for my right knee.
-Tim (looking for some hope....somewhere)
From:
tim - santantj@yahoo.com
