Impact injury- knee

[Drtgirl]

So I wiped out in today's cross race. I was at the top of a run-up and bam! next thing I know I'm on my left side. My knee hurt but I got back on the bike thinking I could ride it off. Nope- about 300m later I could only pedal with my right leg. I pulled out of the race needless to say.

Now it's swollen, painful and I can't bend it much. Besides R-I-C-E what else can I do?

[Wahine]

RICE is the key to life right now. Without any other information I don't have much advice for you. Did you land directly on your knee/knee cap area?

Is there a lot of bruising? If there is you really should have an X-ray.

How long did it take for the swelling to show up? If it became swollen in less than a couple of hours....X-ray.

Are you having trouble weight bearing? If so...X-ray.

I'm sensing a recurrent theme here.

[bacarver]

My advice after sustaining a knee injury a couple summers ago is to take the time to let your knee heal. Relax. TV. Read. Crafts. Elevate your leg. Don't let anyone push you to hurry up and recover. You'll know when you're ready to get back into your regular routine. Be patient. Time will pass and you'll feel strong again.
Barb

[RoadRaven]

Sorry to hear about the crash... wishing you a speedy recovery with minimal damage

[sundial]

Oh man, get that baby x-rayed. You don't want to put off a bad knee injury. Those suckers can be sneaky and the injury might be alot worse than you think.

[Kathyrides]

I was in a crash in a crit in June and hit a sign post with my front of my helmet, took off lots of skin on the side of me and seperated my shoulder. It wasn't until a couple weeks later that I noticed my knee hurt. My ortho says I probably did some damage to the underside of my knee cap which is normally smooth and it may bother me forever or not.

I had unrelated surgery 5 weeks ago and didn't ride for 2-3 weeks and my knee didn't hurt at all once I was back on the trainer and riding my knee hurts again.

At the time of the accident, from the outside I couldn't see anything wrong with my knee other than my road rash. I'm thinking of going back to my Ortho to have him check again and maybe get a MRI.

[Possegal]

definitely get the MRI on your knee, that should tell a lot. i will say that i dislocated my patella years back and close to a year later the MRI showed really severe bruising on the underside of the knee cap and that was very painful. it did eventually clear up though, but it took a long time. i had other issues that were fixed surgically, but the bruising just took a lot of time. so time may be your friend here, though i'm sure you're like me and want to be better now!

[OakLeaf]

How's it feeling drtgrl?

When I did a stupid thing on my motorcycle and ran my knee into the side of a minivan at a combined speed of 70 mph, it was swollen for weeks. I think it was water on the knee, there definitely seemed to be a sloshy pouch of fluid involved. Is yours anything like that? Electro-stim helped bring it down finally, after four or five weeks, and it's none the worse now.