17. WHAT DO YOU MEAN THE THING I DO EVERY WEEK IS MAKING IT WORSE?
Over the summer, I was doing my orthopedic internship. Working with a female patient, early 60s, just moved into a senior living community but hated the label it gave her and liked being really active (bike riding, walking, golf, etc).
She is at the clinic for a right meniscus tear, and is trying the conservative approach to avoid having to get surgery on her arthritic knee.
Now, I need to emphasize that this woman LOVED being active. Like, even during therapy, she would keep up her golfing, pickleball, etc. I would always remind her to not do so much to let the knee heal and to focus on her exercises, and to lay off those high-stress activities.
No matter how much I told her to do less or stop altogether, she just continued to play. I couldn’t stop her, so instead of ruining my rapport with her, I just reminded her at every session we had.
Well one fine session comes along, she tells me her knee is hurting a bit extra (surprise surprise) after playing pickleball all weekend long.
I told her once again to lay off those activities, and to avoid golfing tomorrow (she would golf on Tuesdays). Of course, she says no, then follows up with this: “Ya know, golfing takes the stress of the knee with how it moves during your swing. So it’s good I’m doing that.”
Except it doesn’t. Literally, three special tests used in examination to assess the presence of a meniscal tear mimic the motion done by the back leg in a golf stance.
I just smile and say okay, while I’m internally screaming inside. This was also during my last week of the internship, so when I saw her again later that week, I became a bit more adamant about her activity level and her condition.
I handed her an article about meniscal tears and the involvement of the rotational aspect that can lead to further tears, told her that while I know that I can’t convince her to quit all her hobbies, that she has to stop most of them or she will never recover conservatively, and that she can absolutely replace it with a water aerobics class that her community runs.
redbeard019