A shot to the knee

It's been a while since I have talked about my knees.  The last time around I was having some work done on my right knee to clean up an old meniscus tear.  It was thought that the tear was the cause of the swelling I was having in my knee.  Unfortunately when the Doc was in there cleaning things up, he found extensive degenerative arthritis issues throughout my knee - grade 3 to be exact.

So after I was up and running again after the meniscus cleanup, my swelling never subsided.  We tried hyaluronic acid, which didn't help and we just decided to just monitor the swelling and manage my activity level.

Here we are 3 years later and I'm still on the 'manage my knee' plan.  I went in to see the Doc again today to see if there had been any developments in treating my knee, especially after I overdid my activity a couple of weekends ago and really set off the inflammation.  It has gotten to the point of keeping me up at night due to the level of swelling I have.

Since there is nothing new in the world of treatment (stem cell treatment is still too new for insurance to be accepting of that kind of treatment) we went the route of a cortisone injection.  He took a nice long needle, numbed the point of entry with some cold spray stuff and injected me.

We'll see what it does.  I already feel some relief from the injection, but that is mainly due to the anesthetics that were in the cortisone mixture.  Hopefully it provides me some relief in the near term and lasts a few months.  I can get injections 3 times a year if this proves to be successful.