This isn’t so much funny ha ha but I’m so done with my leg and with trying to get this treated let’s go
The story starts 11 years ago. I’m in college and walking into the classroom of the professor I have a crush on and as I smile and wave at her, I hear what sounds like a gunshot, and I’ve fallen to the floor like a rock. My right knee feels like it’s gone, I’m struck by white hot pain that only lasts for a second or two before I feel nothing at all. I just lay there, accepting that I’ve been shot and deciding to play dead. But there are no more gunshots and someone asks if I’m okay and if I can stand. I realize I wasn’t shot and figure my knee must have dislocated like it often did and I can snap it back into place.
But I couldn’t. No one really seemed to care even when I said I thought I might be hurt. At that point, I figured i must be being dramatic and hobbled home even though my leg kept locking and collapsing. Doctors initially said I must have pulled a muscle and to walk it off. I tried for a month. It wasn’t. I later found out I tore my MCL and when I did my kneecap dislocated, hit the bone beneath it, and shattered. Walking for a month on it made fully repairing these injuries impossible and my knee is permanently dislocated with little support preventing it from just drifting to the outside. My doctor said “Normally I’d consider replacing it at this point if you were, you know, and athlete.” He gestured to my stomach and said “But CLEARLY you aren’t. So this will just keep happening.”
Since then, I’ve broken both my feet, both my ankles, torn my meniscus, and had countless random falls and leg collapses. I’ve also had a lumbar laminectomy to try to stop some of the pain I was in. My most recent injury is the worst though.
I noticed really bad back and pelvic pain a few months ago and my doctors insisted it was sciatica from my stenosis but when I told them sciatica treatments and exercises weren’t helping they dismissed that.
Guess what. One day, I rotated my leg slightly to the outside to let my partner pass me and a horrible popping sound happened. I felt something snap inside my leg and immediately went into shock. It took awhile to process the pain I’m in more pain than I’ve ever been in and for weeks, doctors just kinda shrugged and seemed to think I was being dramatic. Again, it was “just a muscle strain.” One told me to “stop the dramatics” because I was crying from the pain and asking if there was ANYTHING they could do to help, and also gestured to my wheelchair as she spoke to make sure I knew she thinks I don’t need it.
Turns out my fucking labrum in my hip tore. It had been tearing gradually due to a CAS lesion (“bony protrusion” as it said on the MRI report.) I’ve barely been able to get out of bed and if I need to walk further than the bathroom I need my wheelchair. Even that short trip is risky. They also think I have a secondary injury that is possibly worse in the cursed knee.
In the middle of this, I get a new job that is accommodating and is willing to work with me as we work on getting the injury is repaired, but changing insurance means that getting treatment is even further delayed and I can’t sleep like at all anymore because of the pain in the meantime
I thought it must be funny because so few of the medical professionals I’ve seen have taken it seriously at all and two have laughed at me or looked amused when I told them how much pain I was in just because they were so sure I was either lying for drugs or attention.
