Initial injury
In the Summer 2006, I was leisurely jogging around the estate, but this all stopped when my running gait changed... my right foot slapped onto the ground as I ran. There was no pain. I had no reason to suspect that something had damaged my foot. I continued jogging. This slapping happened for a second and third step, followed by a violent, violent, violent pain inside the lateral side of my knee as if it had been hit by a javelin at 90 degrees... and I never jogged again.
This is how I represent the pattern of my jogging, and the major pain.
I was jogging in a rhythmic left-right pattern...
left, right;
left, right;
jog, jog;
jog, jog...
... when the pattern changed to...
jog, jog;
jog, jog;
jog, slap;
jog, slap;
jog, slap...
... which, after (or during) the third 'slap', there followed a 'violent, violent, violent pain' from within the lateral side of my right knee that lasted for 10 to 15 seconds. Nothing whatsoever touched it from the outside. I hobbled home... and haven't jogged, nor even walked properly since then.
However, after the 'violent, violent, violent pain' eased, there was:
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no pain,
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no swelling,
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no bruising,
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no redness,
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no anything...
... but after a short while (and who knows why) a slight pain did arise in my right hip?!
This, to me, clearly displays a timeline upon which to base the order in which things happened, and a rough idea of the activity that was occurring at that time. Despite having little information upon which to develop a theory of what happened, there are the start and end points to consider...
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the problem must have initially occurred before the first 'slap' in order for my foot to be able to slap down,
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the problem may have occurred at toe-off of the previous step,
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as my foot slapped down instantenously, there wouldn't have been time for muscles to become weak and lose control without some sort of external intervention,
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the violent, violent, violent pain must have occurred whilst my foot was fixed on the ground with the third 'slap',
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it seems that as my foot slapped down on the ground, it went straight into stance phase, omitting the heel phase, and not getting as far as the toe-off phase of gait,
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the violent, violent, violent pain was the very last problem at the time of the injury.
So it seems to me that, as this slapping occurred instantaneiously, it cannot have been caused by muscles becoming weak from lack of use or incorrect use. They were working one minute and not the next. Clearly something must have happened to cause this transformation. Muscles cannot become weak of their own accord without some external force, such as disease, neurology or physical damage!
And now some 8+ years on from the original injury, there is no improvement. In fact things are worse! Clearly the tear in the lateral meniscus was not the cause, and likely, as I thought all along, was a consequence of my injury and not the cause. Clinically, however, it has been diagnosed as 'degenerative' following the arthroscopy.
But as time drags on, symptoms remain and others appear. But these may not be new issues, rather ones that were there all the time but had not been noticed. This may be further confounded by the fact that some complex bodily systems can 'change' their function depending on which 'end' started it...
And, of course, there are newly developing symptoms, or awareness of them, such as muscle weakness, because muscles are not being used, or are not being used correctly. This is a very frustrating diagnosis because the implication is that physiotherapy exercises are not being performed. However, if the exercises are being performed regularly and there is no improvement then it seems to me that there must be a cause for this muscle inactivity... and this brings me back to my original notion in this regard.
Now however, I have to battle people's notion that all my symptoms are a result of proprioception as defined by http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proprioception:
... meaning "one's own", "individual" and perception, is the sense of the relative position of neighbouring parts of the body and strength of effort being employed in movement... It is provided by proprioceptors in skeletal striated muscles and in joints... The brain integrates information from proprioception and from the vestibular system into its overall sense of body position, movement, and acceleration.
... the vestibular system is described by http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vestibular_system:
... which contributes to balance in most mammals and to the sense of spatial orientation, is the sensory system that provides the leading contribution about movement and sense of balance.
If only someone would listen to my history of the injury...