I try not to spend too much time reporting on the continuing saga of my knees! However, I thought some of the "dodgey knee" readers might be interested to hear of my first encounter with a steroid injection.
There is a long history associated with this but to try & summarise:
Left knee: diagnosis by MRI (last October); extensive "wear & tear"; partial tear in medial meniscus. Likely ultimate outcome - knee replacement. However, this needs to be delayed as long as possible so in the meantime more careful management of activity; use of NSAIDs; much less fell running & much less caving. Fell walking; paddling etc all still ok to do.
Right knee: basically its been exactly where the other one has, suffers similar symptoms + an injury (possible medial meniscus tear) while running 12 weeks ago - oops! At this stage assumed to be in similar condition to above.
I went to see the GP earlier in the week - my GP's surgery have been hugely helpful - and he suggested a cortisone injection to the right knee for the following reasons:
- its has been considerably more painful than the left one of late
- the cortisone should provide pain relief
- the injection should help to distinguish between pain caused by wear & tear (i.e. it ought to relieve this type of pain), whilst being less effective against pain caused by flapping tears of cartiallige. i.e. a diagnostic element
Outcome: the injection wasn't especially painful but so far has resulted in total relief of all pain symptoms!
I guess overall I've got to regard this as a good result at least in the short term, the only negative is that it points to the likely root cause being much more to do with long term wear & tear (i.e. ultimately knee replacement for this one too) rather than just meniscus damage which could be fixed by arthroscopy.
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