it was an early start today as I had to get to the hospital by half eight for a steroid injection into my troublesome left knee.
For anyone who hasn’t been following the story (and I have been harping on about it for a while now) being old I suffer with Osteoarthritis.
So far this has affected the first finger of my right hand which is sort of bent in the middle but apart from that is not painful. For a number of years, my right knee has been painful but over that timescale, I have learnt to live with it, helped by paracetamol and ibuprofen.
Then, about six months ago, my other knee came out in sympathy or more accurately set out to outdo the left. Strangely, as the left got more painful the right got less so.
There is a theory that your body cannot process pain signals from different parts of the body simultaneously and only the stronger wins through. I kind of believe that as during a recent spell with a trapped nerve in my shoulder, both knees were almost pain free. When the shoulder problem resolved itself, back came the knees.
After being referred to a specialist who wanted me to have a total knee replacement, I negotiated to have a Hydrocortisone injection in my knee instead.
Because of the heightened risk of infection caused by the injection interfering with the body’s natural hormone production, should I have to go down the operation route, I can’t have surgery for a number of months and the more injections that I may have, the longer the ‘cooling off’ period.
I am hoping that with the pain relief granted by the injection, I can get back to regular exercise which, in the past, has greatly lessened knee pain. If that works, I can push back what is probably the inevitable meeting with the surgeon’s knife.
I arrived at the hospital and after making my way to the Physiotherapy department, signed in and filled in a few questionnaires before my aloted time.
The physiotherapist, Kelly, called me in and briefly went through my history including my past glory days of walking. She asked if I was working and I told her I had retired.
“You’d suppose to say that I don’t look old enough”, I told her.
A giggle. “You don’t”, she replied. What a charmer.
With the aid of my x-rays from a previous visit, she explained that she would inject the gunk into the gap between the worn out halves of my knee followed by a local anesthetic.
“Go for it”.
In went the needle and the hydrocortisone was pushed in followed by the anesthetic. A couple of plaster covered the injection site and as I’d been a big strong boy, I was given a sticker and a lollypop. I may have made that last bit up !
I was given a coffee and asked to wait for a quarter of an hour in case of any ill effects – of which there were none.
A follow up appointment was made for a couple of weeks time and I was free to go.
An hour after receiving the jab, I can’t say that it feels a lot different but it may take a number of days before becoming effective.