Cracking knee

That’s sounds weird doesn’t it? Cracking knee. Say that 10 times fast.

That’s what I woke up with on Thursday.

I won’t say I woke up in the morning ’cause I didn’t. I’ve become extremely nocturnal in the last week or so. I was doing better for a while going to bed at 3 a.m. or 4 a.m. and now I’m back to 6 or even 7 a.m. I’m not trying to stay up. It just happens that way.

My knees have been talking to me a lot in the past two weeks or so. We’ve had cooler weather, a lot of rain and the threat of snow.

I’ve had bad knees since I was a teenager. I used to be a track and field short distance runner and I was on the Ontario Track team when my knees first started acting up. It turns out my lower legs aren’t put together properly. I have what is called tibia extortia which means my tibia- the shin bone – isn’t right at the front of my leg, it angles a bit more to the outer aspect of my legs, which makes the other bone – the fibula (that’s the one that makes the little bump on the outer side of your knee below the kneecap) end up being right on the side of my knee.

Yeah my knees look a bit odd. I’m mostly the only person that really notices but if someone were to look carefully at my legs when I’m sitting down in a short skirt or shorts they would notice that my knee caps actually point outward and the fibula bone is quite visible as a bony protuberance on the side of my leg.

Yeah I’m the last kid of 5 and I wasn’t expected, which means that my parents had me late in life. I figure I was a bad egg! I have one other malformation that I know of (other than having Crohns too!) and that is in my lower spine. Two of my lower vertebrae are fused together on one side. Luckily my back rarely hurts, so I’m assuming that so far this little twist of fate hasn’t caused me any major problems yet.

Ok so much for the anatomy lesson! Back to my knees! You might remember that I had a bad fall in July. I tripped on a weirdly formed curb, in the dark, and fell very hard right on my knees. I guess my right knee took the brunt of it and it immediately swelled up with fluid. Unfortunately, my husband was extremely impaired due to drinking a good portion of the free flowing liquor being served at that party and he thought my knee was only hurt a *little* bit, despite my telling him that I needed to go to the hospital. BTW I never say I need to go to the hospital, not even when I’m pretty sure that my crohn’s is causing a bowel obstruction. I hate being a patient. So if I say I need to go to the ER I really must need to go.

My knee was examined several times and It was determined that I had a huge pocket of blood in my knee cap. They wouldn’t know if I damaged my knee until the swelling went down. Well, the swelling started to go down about a month later but it would periodically flare up and swell a bit on and off until perhaps mid-September.

For the last two weeks of September I was happy to say that my knee felt normal again. But then the bad weather started and both my knees were aching on and off. Ok no big deal my knees hurt now and then, and sometimes hurt for months at a time. Plus I have Crohns and you can have a form of like arthritis symptoms with Crohn’s disease too.

Sunday, Monday, Tuesday – both of my knees ached to varying degrees. One day the left was worse, another the right was worse. Wednesday wasn’t bad at all.

Thursday I woke up (hey I’m finally back to where I started! Hooray!) and as I swung my legs out of bed I heard the oddest noise.

Crrrrrreaaaaaaaacckkkkkkkkk clack clack greeeeaaaaacccccccccllllllickckckckck.

WTF?

I stretched out my right leg again and heard that awful grinding noise as my kneecap first slide upward towards my thigh and then back down into normal position as I bent my leg.

Oh Oh what the heck is going on now?

The funny thing is that my knee didn’t hurt all that much. The snapping, crackling, popping and grinding noises sounded terrible, but there was a lot less pain than earlier in the week. Today it’s still making funny noises and it’s hurting a bit more than Thursday, but it’s still not as bad pain wise as over the last two weeks.

I guess I’m going to have to go and see yet another doctor to find out if that fall I had in July caused whatever’s going on now, or if it’s the Crohn’s, the weather or what.

Like I need any more problems.

Hey body??? You’re still relatively young … what’s going on?

Oh yeah- I was a bad egg. That’s it.