Hilary's Knee Pain

by Hilary
(Alexandria,VA)

I started to get knee pain while at a soccer camp. The night before I had fallen and landed on my knee so I didn't say anything for a while to my parents b/c they freak out when I get hurt. The soccer camp was in august by the way.

So in November I started track at my high school and the pain kept getting worse. I finally could not handle the pain anymore so at my high school we have an athletic trainer and I went to her. I told her what was happening and she examined my knee but I was not getting much better so she sent me to the doctor. Of course my parents did not listen and took me to my family doctor for a sports injury.

They told me I had chrondromalacia so I did some exercises before practice and they helped some but I still had knee pain so this time I went to sports doctor. He said that I probably had tendonitis so he sent me to PT (physical therapy) for 6 weeks and told me to come back after 6 weeks.

I was still having knee pain so I had a MRI done and it showed that my kneecap was not aligned right like it was supposed to be. So my correct diagnosis is patella femoral pain syndrome.

SO now that I had the right diagnosis I tried PT again and I was to come back in 6 weeks.
Well when I came back again I still had knee pain so they said the only option I had left was to do a lateral release surgery. I said as long as my knee will not hurt when I run then I will do it even though I was a sophomore in high school. I wanted to get it done so I could run for the rest of high school.

So I got the surgery done and there were no complications. I did PT for a couple weeks and was able to run XC (cross country) with no knee pain. Even though I started XC late, I still had a good season. I am now in college and I have never had knee pain since. I now wish that I would have told the ATC at my school about my knee pain sooner so that I would not have had to run with pain for so long.