Yet Another Cycling Forum
General Category => The Knowledge => Health & Fitness => Topic started by: Julian on 16 August, 2010, 10:32:55 am
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I'm assuming the word comes from the same stem as decrepitude. Anyway, crepitation is what there is a lot of in my knees. Having finally fulfilled my new year resolution to take my knees to the GP, the GP says they're chock full of crepitation and has sent me down the hospital for an x-ray just in case.
He also says it's a shame I don't have private health care. :-\
Apparently the NHS physio service is mammothly overstretched and so I'm saving the pennies for a private consultation with a physio.
Nice doctor though - this one didn't suggest that I give up all forms of exercise foreveranever, which is a bonus. And I got a new word out of it. Crepitation. I love learning words sufficiently obscure that the spell check doesn't know them. :thumbsup:
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Oh crep. :(
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;D
Innit. Hoping that if I finally get them sorted, I might be okay for an SR series next year though.
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If only your name was Suzette, then you'd have Crepes Suzette...
Creps is just a symptom though (I get creptastic hangover knees). Bike/knee, that's usually arthriticky gack that wants a kneecap scale and polish, isn't it?
Also: a sports physio consult's usually around £40, the bank breaketh not (especially when considering the specialist knowledge that comes with sporty physios).
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I think it might just be a kneecap scale and polish, yes.
Depending on the outcome of the x-ray I might be wandering back to the hospital for an arthroscopy, which I made the huge mistake of googling.
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I wouldn't overly fret, Julian.
I'm a lot older than you, and have had dry, grating noises from my kneecaps since I was about 6. At times the noise is audible from a distance. All sorts of dire things predicted.
My knees are still going fine, although they are a bit nobbly. I've gone through a running phase, doing 20-30 miles a week, cycling, rock climbing.
Apart from the terrible noises and presumably some pain, what other symptoms are you getting?
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Some slight inflammation too, but mainly lots of pain - it's only the fact that I can't manage my eight-mile commute and my knees are painful when I'm doing nothing at all that has finally driven me to the doc.
That and the fact that I kinda fancy a half-iron for my thirtieth birthday, and need working knees to do it with...
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Crepitus and crepitation are used to denote a crunchy sound/sensation like the Snap-Crackle-Pop of Rice Krispies and milk.
There's crepitus in a lung with pneumonia that can be felt on the chest as well as heard with a stethesocpe.
It's just a polite way of saying your knees grate which is probably not news.
Good luck with the physio and hope your knees improve.
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I have very creppity knees (too much damage to them in the past).
If your GP decides to send you on for a consultant appointment, ask him to do it via Choose & Book and see if you can get yourself into the Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital. They're the mutts nuts!
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If your GP decides to send you on for a consultant appointment, ask him to do it via Choose & Book ...
If the bloody system's working >:(
mutter...mutter...mutter...
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If your GP decides to send you on for a consultant appointment, ask him to do it via Choose & Book ...
If the bloody system's working >:(
mutter...mutter...mutter...
My techy guy assures me that the main problem with Choose & Book is the fleshy interface... ;)
...and having met many of them in my new role I can only agree.
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Your techy guy is wrong on that point. Whilst the fleshy interface (trained for long years in anatomy, physiology etc etc etc and not at all on computers) is often unreliable, we have had a spate of C&B closing down the patient database when accessed, before the consultation can be recorded, or losing the notes already made.
C&B sometimes doesn't open, or doesn't register the inputs. It takes a long time, and is a bit rubbish.
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Your techy guy is wrong on that point. Whilst the fleshy interface (trained for long years in anatomy, physiology etc etc etc and not at all on computers) is often unreliable, we have had a spate of C&B closing down the patient database when accessed, before the consultation can be recorded, or losing the notes already made.
C&B sometimes doesn't open, or doesn't register the inputs. It takes a long time, and is a bit rubbish.
In our region that certainly isn't the case... but you're in the NHS London region aren't you? If so, then there are infrastructure issues - but these aren't actually C&B issues.
In or experience 99% of time when referrers say there is a technical problem there isn't. And I have the tech logs to prove it! ;D
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I had this a few years ago. It got to the point where I was worried going up ladders (like into the loft) because the knees had a habit of giving way.
I wasn't doing much cycling at that point (before I was a born-again cyclist). I went to the doc, crossed my legs, she put her hand on my knee as I straightened it. She said "Ewww, I'm not doing that again" and sent me of to the hospital. Lots of x-rays, they suggested keyhole scale'n'polish, but also suggested leaving it until it was at a point where potential side effects would not be as bad as living with it.
I took a lot of vitamin-i as they recommended, and didn't bother with the knife.
When I started cycling again I had to be careful which leg I started off with, and to not push to hard on starting as that would cause huge pain. But it has gradually got better over the years, so now I hardly have any problems - certainly my knees are no worse than other ageing parts of my body! I regularly take other joint-related pills (cod liver oil, Glucosamine and chondroitin sulphate) which I started using after getting a thumb injury in a car accident. They seem to have helped too - but I don't remember if you are veggie so they may not be appropriate for you.
Hope you get sorted.
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I think it might just be a kneecap scale and polish, yes.
Depending on the outcome of the x-ray I might be wandering back to the hospital for an arthroscopy, which I made the huge mistake of googling.
I think that's what a cousin of mine had some time back. He went back to a career in ballet - if a little success anecdata helps.
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So will Julian become a Prima Ballerina?
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Wot the devil is Vitamin I?
I know Vitamin P. That's pasties. :thumbsup:
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Ibuprofen.
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Ibuprofen?
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Those who saw me limping around the campsite will know that I'm in the same boat, but slightly further progressed. I've had the x-ray, and the results have returned to my GP as "No Further Action".
But it still hurts.
So I've now made another appointment with my GP to discuss what that means.
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Snap synchronised posting with Greenbank
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I have yet to have met a person with hurty/crunchy knees who found that surgery helped make them less painfull.
Unless you have really destroyed your knee or torn something that keeps it all in place and need sharpish emergency treatment I would see if it gets better on it's own.
My knees take it in turns to be painfull at the moment - at least I know when it will rain.
Also - never listen to any bugger who claims to have "shin-splints"
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So will Julian become a Prima Ballerina?
This thread is useless etc ... but if you want to photoshop a tutu onto a picture of her, be my guest ;D
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I have yet to have met a person with hurty/crunchy knees who found that surgery helped make them less painfull.
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You must meet my sister and me then. Both of us have surgery for just such problems with our knees - my sister has had to have it repeated because her degeneration is worse than mine - and in both our cases it made our knees significantly less painful.
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I have yet to have met a person with hurty/crunchy knees who found that surgery helped make them less painfull.
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You must meet my sister and me then. Both of us have surgery for just such problems with our knees - my sister has had to have it repeated because her degeneration is worse than mine - and in both our cases it made our knees significantly less painful.
That sounds like an inherited condition well beyond normal wear and tear to me...so not entirely relevant.
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I have yet to have met a person with hurty/crunchy knees who found that surgery helped make them less painfull.
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You must meet my sister and me then. Both of us have surgery for just such problems with our knees - my sister has had to have it repeated because her degeneration is worse than mine - and in both our cases it made our knees significantly less painful.
That sounds like an inherited condition well beyond normal wear and tear to me...so not entirely relevant.
So you're a rheumatologist as well as a psychiatrist?
Wonders will never cease...
::-)
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I have yet to have met a person with hurty/crunchy knees who found that surgery helped make them less painfull.
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You must meet my sister and me then. Both of us have surgery for just such problems with our knees - my sister has had to have it repeated because her degeneration is worse than mine - and in both our cases it made our knees significantly less painful.
That sounds like an inherited condition well beyond normal wear and tear to me...so not entirely relevant.
So you're a rheumatologist as well as a psychiatrist?
Wonders will never cease...
::-)
If you want to make this unpleasent I suggest you say sorry to Liz first OR BUGGER OFF.
My grandfather had chronic athritis, he got it young and it crippled him, I will probably get it as well.
Any more questions? because dragging shit from one thread into another just to serve your smugness is some really petty unpleasant behaviour, I don't care how clever you think you are.
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Play nicely or don't play at all.
Don't pretend to be an expert on anything unless you are.
PLEASE!
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I didn't.
Some one who thinks he knows everything decided to be a knob and play petty point scoring games.
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Thanks Zoiders - that sounds like what they said at the hospital, don't demand knee surgery unless they find something really unusual, because the surgery doesn't always help (it sounds like most people with knee stuff go "argh, knees, I must have surgery right now yesterday.") Since I wasn't volunteering that was fine by me ;D
X-ray results next weekish...
I shan't be taking up a career as a ballerina unless knee physio makes me significantly more graceful ;D
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Watch the physio...
The first one I had wasn't keen on cycling and he suggested it would make things worse, despite the orthopod saying it was fine and would help. I ended up swapping physios and the second one was fine. Like the surgeon, she recommended cycling.
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Can you get yourself added to some nice person's corporate insurance policy? ;)
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I was about to say that if the NHS turns out to be totally crep then I would recommend this place (http://www.hosmatnet.com/) - cheap once you get there and good docs, airfare would be the major problem - but Andy's post suggests that even if you go private it's not a prob, and you don't (probably and hopefully) need surgery anyway, so... good luck!
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I'm going to the physio next week, and my x-ray results should be back about the same time. If the GP's surgery can bear to part with them, that is (and these people are going to be taking over the hospitals, are they? Jesus wept.)
The inflammation in the knee has mainly gone and it's not hurting from stationary. I managed to commute yesterday and although I could feel my knee, I didn't get any pain.
Any ideas for cycling or running (swimming's okay) for poorly knees? Should I be nixing trying to run altogether for a while (my sister just did a 10k in 55 minutes; I haz competitive streak) or are there ways and means? Gym membership means I can do a treadmill if that's any better than the mean streets. And with cycling, again, I can use the bikes at the gym although I'm not a fan of indoor cycling, or should I be trying to do increasing distances in a very low gear, or short distances a bit harder?
Anybody who's been there and done it and got advice, please share!
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I'd definitely nix running until it's either happy or as happy as it is getting. Treadmills have a sprung surface which means it's less impacty than roads; even less impacty is the cross-trainer (aka elliptical) which is that thing that's like footpods on levers that mimic running without any, y'know, running.
The teen gamines naturally cluster to these machines, and I used one to good effect rehabbing the worst of my sad knee.
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My knee really likes low gears. Its tolerance for high (much over 100rpm) cadences is reduced when it's playing up, so the combination can imply slowness. But if I'm careful I can ride indefinitely, and the more riding I do (without doing anything silly), the more stable it is.
It doesn't like walking, especially in suboptimal footwear. If it's being crap, I won't leave the house on foot without hiking boots. In my book running is something you do when not missing your train/bus is a less painful option than a day or two of actual pain, and can usually be mitigated through better planning or taking the bike.
Increasing distances on the bike in a low gear sounds like a good idea to me, and I'd be inclined to leave the running, at least until after getting some input from the physio.
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I only just looked in this thread so forgive I and I if I and I are a bit slow.
November last year I did a silly bit of riding, trying to atch a van driver to "Teach Him a Lesson", and had a bad combination of problems. Had a TIA and was hospital for a few days but the thing that was worst was my left knee was in agony, whether moving or still! Since then it has not got any betterer and the X-rays I had showed no problems. Had some gels from the GP to use but they didn't help much. Hardly able to cycle at all and walking is a bigger problem than normal. Managed to get some NSAID's from the GP a couple of days ago and am feeling some relief but still too much pain to do much. Should I try and see a Physio' privately? I saw the Lady Physio' that is at my local GP's once every three weeks and she told me to just do some easy movements and it would be alright. That was 6 months ago and I had little confidence in her at the time, less now!
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Julian, I gave up on NHS physios. It's not that they don't have the knowledge, etc, but you are limited to 15 mins treatment per session, which will be something like every 2-4 weeks and it's not really enough for anything.
I had a friend who was doing a stint at the NHS and she confirmed that it's not because they don't want to, but simply because of the silly short sessions.
I ended up using these guys:
Portland Physio London Physiotherapy Practice - central London physiotherapists WC1 and NW8 (http://www.portlandphysio.co.uk/)
They're used to dealing with sports injuries, meaning that they will work with you to keep you active, or even competitive if needed. (But will also warn you of the risks of doing so).
They are also aware that people paying out of their own pockets wants to keep the cost down, so they'll work with you to keep cost down.
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Join a scheme like this Paycare - here to help (http://www.paycare.org)
check the limits and payments, you may find that when you add up all your medical bills that the scheme is cheaper.
Says the man who gets minimum cover from his employer and tops up from wages, then claims Dental, Optical each year to recoup the amount I spent! I also get the opportunity for Chiropodist and Sports Physio if I need.
Other schemes are available. YMMV
Regarding NHS physio, after an RTA where my leg was badly broken, I got an appointment for physio once per week, we discussed my return to fitness and I asked for and GOT THREE appointments each week for three months. My leg was expected to take 12 months to heal - I managed it in four months.
If you feel that your physio does not give the advice you want/need then ask if you can talk to another person.
;D