The Long & Winding Road

Well I went to see a consultant last week. As I was still unlikely to get to see a consultant on the NHS for at least another month, I arranged on Wednesday an appointment with a consultant privately for the next day. (Who says money doesn't buy you preferential treatment?)

The consultant told me that he would prefer not to operate on the tear as it was difficult to get to the damage and there was a serious risk of an operation causing more damage than I have at present. The consultant instead drained some fluid off the knee and sent me for physiotherapy.

Again thanks to the miracles of paying privately, I was able to see a physiotherapist the same day. After a lengthy consultation and some manipulation he gave me a series of exercises to perform daily. He also told me that I appear to have two injuries to my knee; the tear that was shown up in the MRI scan, and a possible boney injury just above my knee cap on the left side of the left knee. This confirms what I have thought all along. Since Thursday, I have been more aware of the two different injuries and the pain is coming from the injury above the knee cap rather than the tear.

I have an appointment with the physiotherapist again on Thursday, and am seeing my GP on Friday and hope to get some form of x ray referral for the injury above the knee cap. I am starting to think the tear is a minor issue and can be resolved by the exercises to build up the other muscles in my knee to ease the pressure on the tear. The pain above the knee cap is concerning me as it appears to be getting worse not better.It is some 9 weeks or so since the accident and should have been getting better if it was just bruising. At least that is what I would have expected, but I am not a doctor!

There was some good news from the physiotherapist though as he advised me that using an exercise bike would be good for my knee if I used it gently. Guess who has got the turbo trainer out of the shed and will be riding everyday in the house now? The only downside is that he told me to use a geared bike, not my favourite fixed wheel bike.

Both the consultant and the physiotherapist left me with some hope that I will be able to ride in the USA in May on the Police Unity Tour. So to that end things are positive.

I can't leave this post without a word on the weather. I know many people had problems getting into work this week because of the weather. Not me though. My problems were not weather related. Actually here in Ilford we never got more than about 1" of snow. I feel left out as apparently the rest of the country have had loads of snow.