Down On My Knees

On Monday night, January 7, I noticed that when my right leg was in certain positions, it would cause my leg and body to spasm a little bit. I also had other symptoms like Goosebumps, high blood pressure and pressure on my chest. All of these are signs of autonomic dysreflexia, a common issue that people with spinal cord injuries get when something is bothering their body. Even though I have limited feeling, I knew something wasn’t quite right because of the way my body was reacting. Although I couldn’t quite figure out which part it was or how it happened.

The next day was when I saw that my right knee and below it was somewhat swollen compared to my other one. I wasn’t able to do much range of motion on my leg due to the feelings I was having and so I decided to make an appointment to see my primary doctor. They only had Thursday available so I took what I could get. When I woke up Wednesday morning my knee was almost twice the size due to more swelling along with some bruising!

When I went in, he took a look at my leg and didn’t think it was fractured or broken so I ended up not doing an x-ray like I thought I needed. Instead he told me I needed an MRI to see if something was torn inside. I wasn’t able to schedule one until Tuesday, January 21, because there were a lot of things that had to be done directly beforehand.

I needed to get there about an hour earlier than my appointment. Because the magnetic field of an MRI machine is so powerful even just being in the room is enough to pull someone’s glasses off their face if it contains metal. First they had to prep me to go into the room so I was transferred to a bed. My trach that I currently use has metal in it so then, they had to change my trach to a different one called a shyly. After that they switched me over onto a MRI safe ventilater.

Along with my right knee, about 5 months ago I started feeling pain on the inside of my left knee. Anytime it was moved a certain way or touched I would cringe. I went to another orthopedic doctor a month ago and he gave me a cortisone shot to see if it would stop the pain. He told me that if it continued to have an MRI of it. So as long as they were doing my right leg, they decided to do my left as well.

Aside from the hour it took to get me ready before and the hour it took me to put everything back together after, the whole procedure took about an hour as well (about 30 minutes per leg). I didn’t end up getting home until a little after 6 PM. As soon as I got home, I received a phone call from my primary doctor saying that they did find some issues and for me to follow up with the orthopedic department.

The soonest I could see an orthopedic surgeon was Monday, January 28, directly 3 weeks after I noticed something was wrong! Before I saw the doctor, he wanted an x-ray to see if anything had changed with my fracture. During the appointment he showed me the images of the MRI and x-ray, both clearly making visible the injury. Turns out I have a tibial plateau fracture in my right leg and a torn MCL in my left. He told me that if I were mobile, meaning walking on my legs, that I would need surgery on both of them.

Instead I was instructed that the fracture will heal by itself in about 6 to 12 weeks if I don’t "move my leg" too much. The torn ligament might take longer, if not at all and I’ll probably just have to wear a brace on it. It’s very unfortunate that this happened, especially because I look forward to standing in my wheelchair everyday along with doing stretches on my legs. On the contrary I’ve been doing good respiratory wise. I’ll definitely keep you posted on any updates.

Jenni