The thing about using one leg

I have already talked about my poor left knee suffering under the weight of being the soul usable leg.

A couple of days after the ultrasound that definitely diagnosed my Bakers cyst, (which had ruptured and was separating my calf muscles!) my GP phoned. She told me what I already knew but was more inclined to refer me for a steroid injection than she had been at my first appointment. She put a referral through for an aspiration of my Baker’s cyst and a steroid injection.

I rang through to make my appointment. The receptionist said that they only had one radiologist on that week and he hadn’t done this procedure. Did I want to see him or wait until next week when the other doctors will be back on board? Ah, waiting please.

So today I went in for an ultrasound and treatment of the Baker’s cyst. The radiologist was happy to do the steroid but didn’t think aspiration would be necessary. So I had a nice shot of local into the top (not the back) of my knee and then he removed the syringe and put the steroid syringe on so no double dipping around.

So now I’m back home and of course it feels great because the local is doing its thing. I went from a 6 to a 2 on the pain scale, only my calf hurt. Unfortunately it’s going to wear off in a few hours and then it’ll take about 36-48 hours for the steroid to kick in. During that time period I’m likely to get my cast off so some light weight bearing might start so poor old lefty will have a bit less of a load to bear. It was naturally happier when I used my knee crutches rather than fore arm crutches. There was also no way it could propel me up stairs. It could not do the nice pop up.

I haven’t tried since the steroid went in. 

The other problem I encountered was I fell, a lot! My left leg would just go on strike. Most times it was no problem. I tried to step over a speed bump in our driveway and ended up sprawled on the ground. I had to take the crutch off, hard when you’re splayed, stand up with no support and put it back on.  No real injuries following that or any inside falls. The only damaging fall was on a bus, which was stationary. I pivoted around and crashed to the ground. In the process I managed to push my right knee sideways (a trick of mine) and sprain my right shoulder. Because I bruise easily anyway and I’m on aspirin I developed some lovely bruises. My shoulder is still sore but everything else is fine.