Then you should be thanking me. You're cured!
Gonna get some DSKs, huh? Sweet.

are you crazy? who knows what kind of diseases you'd catch putting porn star lips in your knees?

Friend of mine had some sort of stuff injected into her knees. I forget what it was called but it was made from the combs of roosters and there is a low limit on the number of injections one may get over a lifetime. Something like 2 or 3 treatments, and then it's on to other treatments.

So my appointment with the orthopedist was vaguely disappointing, but not really surprising. He messed around with my knee a bunch and (somehow) determined that my ligaments are fine, it's completely a disintegrating cartilage issue. Which on the one hand is good, because ligament problems are a much bigger deal, but on the other hand they can actually do something about ligaments, whereas with ragged cartilage there are basically no effective treatments at all. They can do surgery to trim the ragged edge clean, but the problem will always recreate itself, sometimes within a month or less.

He said if I start having sudden severe pain, then a piece of cartilage has actually torn off, and they can do surgery to pull that out, but otherwise the only option is physical therapy, which will have limited benefits for me, if any. I'm not inclined to have to go anywhere twice a week for six weeks anyway.

He did say that once I stop being either pregnant or breastfeeding all the damn time, it should get somewhat better, because the crazy hormones make all your cartilage softer and stretchier on purpose, in order to allow your pelvis to widen. Of course in theory by that point I won't be carrying a child up and down the stairs all the time either, so that will also help. He also allowed as how it was entirely possible that I had Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome, but as mentioned, it didn't really matter if I did or didn't--the symptoms were going to be whatever they were, and the treatment of them would be the same. I'm obviously not a severe case, and apparently that means I definitely don't have to worry about the rare/severe symptoms. I mentioned how it might be useful to know if my kids had the gene, and he said he could refer me to a geneticist if I really really wanted, but it would be a waste of money, since even knowing they were positive for the gene would still just mean waiting and seeing if any troublesome symptoms ever came up, which we can do anyway.

One funny thing, when he was rotating my leg all around, I kept grimacing at a certain point and he frowned and asked, "is THAT when your knee is hurting?" I said no, my knee hurts when you get to THIS point, THAT point is where my hip hurts, because you're popping it in and out of the socket when you rotate it like that. He said, "Huh... well, we'll probably be seeing you again for your hip in another ten years or so, then."

Clod, I really hesitate to get all nutritional on you, esp since I am not currently walking the walk, but I, and many people I know, have had really astounding results from Standard Process nutritional supplements. You should check out their website, I can't really explain well enough.

Bone health (includes cartilage and ligaments)http://www.standardprocess.com/displ...letalL1003.pdf

http://www.standardprocess.com/display/router.aspx

Unfortunately you have to be a doctor to order these, some pharmacies carry them, a lot of chiroquackters carry them as well. There are a bunch of online places who will sell them to you after you fill out a health survey, which may actually be good. You can read their literature and figure out what oyu may need, but some folks who do this all the time, may know what is better.

The markup form wholesale to retail is only 100%, so don't go too crazy trying to find the cheapest stuff. They aren't too bad, price wise, but after my car accident 12 years ago, they were the onl thing that made me able to sleep at night after a year of 3x week chiro treatments and various osteopaths.

The doc I finally went to was a chiro and he stopped doing adjustments after 25 years because he felt no one ever improved form them. He introduced me to these supplements.

Sorry for sounding like an infomercial, but I have had great luck with them.

Cha-Ching!!!

Which supplement were you taking? (Obviously it probably won't be appropriate for me, I'm just curious.) For back/neck pain, I assume? Conveniently, I'm about to go by the local hippie mart next week to stock up on Snapea Crisps for the kids, and I bet they'll carry some if not all of the supplements listed. I'll take a look.

Clod, I had the same problem with stairs. there were times when I had to crawl upstairs. Funny thing about it is, after my marriage broke up, the problem went away. I've decided on 3 possible reasons.
1. Stress
2. Wife and I both used Sweet and Low(artificial sweetener), which I stopped after moving out.
3. Wife was slowly poisoning me.
The above info probably won't help you, but every little bit of info could help.

spudcon, isn't 3 a repeat of 2?

Yeah, back and neck. He gave me something to promote circulation and said something to me about I could get adjsutments for the rest of my life and they'd do no good. The problem was that blood circulation to that area was inadequate to remove the build up of lactic acid and other whatevers i don't recall. Anyway, within a week I was able to sleep again and it is only rarely that I have a flare up of that problem. Conversely, the orthopedist or osteopath, IDR, wrote down something on a little pad of paper and then asked me how long I had been seeing a chiro and when that treatment stopped making me feel any better. I said one year and then six weeks. He held up the pad and it said "six weeks." He, on the other hand said I was as good as I was going to get and I should just suck it up...

So now I am taking Ligaplex for my shoulder.

My hip hurts already, I'm so fooked....

What? Flint said to soak it in cider? Ahem, clodfobble is NOT from the Island of Lesbos!

Buzzkill

Hmm that supplement and chiro thing is interesting. I was rear-ended about 2yrs ago and had chiro treatments until the settlement ended. Seemed to help but I still have a lot of problems, I was told I need to go every month, but I didn't have these problems before the wreck, and the point of goin to the chiro was to get fixed. I don't have the time or money to go every month. Also I had a friend that ran into a lot of bad luck, she was rear ended and the person drove off. Never caught. Her car insurance would only pay at the end of treatment (she couldn't afford it out of pocket though), and her dad (for no real reason) had just removed her from his health insurance. Needless to say she never got any treatment for her whiplash and she had back problems before that. It might be a good thing to recommend and try myself.