A few questions about knee injuries.

[GameTechChris]

Ok, so my knee has been messed up for a few weeks, and it's sort of getting in the way of my serious DDR playing and that bothers me. I just have a few questions for people who may have had the same symptoms.

As far as what's up, I'm not exactly sure what I did to hurt it, but I think it may have started one weekend while I was LARPing and running around a lot. Then a couple days later while I was still a bit sore I did a footrace in the Denny's parking lot and pulled some muscle I think. A couple days later, I wake up and I can't run, play DDR without pain, or walk without limping.

Now it seems to get better in waves. Like, for the past six days I've been able to walk around fine and not notice anything wrong, but today it sort of flared up again, but not as severe as before. I even went out and played a few rounds of DDR and SDGed some songs on Heavy, but I'm nowhere near what I used to be able to do.

I've pretty much factored out joint/bone/cartilage problems. It just doesn't seem like that's the case at all. I'm banking on something muscular, because it only really hurts when I twist a certain weird way (ie to do crossovers) or if I try to fully extend the leg. There's also a general stiffness in the leg on days where it hurts.

My questions are:

Does anybody have any idea what this is?
How long will it last, in theory?
Is it serious? I have no money, and no job, and no insurance, so that would royally suck if it is.
Is playing DDR going to make it that much worse as long as I don't play 10-footers? (Max300 is an 8 on Heavy, trust me)

Thanks y'all.

[abrannan]

I'm not a doctor, and this is not professinal medical advice, but it sounds like you've probably got a strained muscle, or possibly a sprain in your knee. My guess is that it's due to you trying to do too much on it. A small tear or pull (from DDR and LARPing) that would have healed in a couple of days was re-aggravated during your foot race, and probably got worse.

My advice, stay off of it as much as possible for a few days. That means NO DDR, none. Spend the time you would be DDRing stretching out your entire body, including your legs. If you don't have insurance, you don't want to risk doing anything that would make it worse. Hopefully, if you're stretching, it'll have a chance to heal.

Here's why I say don't risk doing any DDR at all for a few days. If your leg still hurts, it's because tere's something wrong with it. It may be a small tear in the muscle, it may be some swelling, it may be a weak tendon. If you try and DDR on it, you run the risk of two things happening. 1) You'll favor that leg, which will cause you to put a different strain than normal on both of your legs, and you may end up twisting or damaging your other leg. 2) You won't do anything different, but your injured leg will be weaker, since it's injured, and won't be able to support you properly when you land on it, and you'll end up making the injury worse (like you did in the Denny's parking lot).

Trust me, your legs won't atrophy (you're only taking a few days off, maybe a week at the longest), and it won't throw your weight loss off track. Do some light walking, a lot of stretching, and give your body some time to heal.

If that doesn't sound doable to you, let me present one possible scenario of what could happen. Let's say you've got a slight strain one of the ligaments in your knees. It's feeling mostly better, just a little stiffness here and there. So you decide to go do some DDR. You run through a few songs on heavy, say around an 8 foot range, and it's not bothering you. So you decide to give Max300 a go. About halfway through the song, you feel your knee start to ache a little bit, so you decide to finish the song out and then stop. During one of the side to side jumps, you come down just wrong on your knee, and feel something snap. One trip to the emergency room later, and you find out you've torn your ACL, you'll need surgery, and you're looking at 6 months of physical therapy ($$$$). Plus, your knee will never be the same again, and you find yourself limited in what you can do. You're never quite able to hit the 10 footers the way you used to.

If it were me, I wouldn't risk it. It's just not worth it.

[GameTechChris]

Heh, weight loss isn't an issue, I'm more worried about competitive play.

I'll definitely take that advice to heart.

Probably start playing IIDX more often or something.

[GameTechChris]

Ok, so I failed my Will saving throw and played a game or two . . . or twenty.

Seems to be getting much better.

Full combo Max300 and Sakura.

Black flag Mahou no Tobira 3x in a row (ggrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!)

Only remnants of slight discomfort. Excellent.

[psmo290]

wow, so u r good

i keep on going back and forth about u being good

cuz sumtime back u were saying stuff about editing pictures with photoshop and if gave me the impression that u r just sum computer nerd that just edit pictures to give urself a good rep.

but maybe i'm wrong

[abrannan]

GameTechChris said:

Ok, so I failed my Will saving throw and played a game or two . . . or twenty.

Seems to be getting much better.

Full combo Max300 and Sakura.

Black flag Mahou no Tobira 3x in a row (ggrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!)

Only remnants of slight discomfort. Excellent.

Yes, but you did manage to take it easy for four days. Four days is better than no days.

Just don't push yourself too hard too fast.