"Knee-d" advice on knee injury!

Yeah, I know--I should see a doctor--but that will have to wait until Monday at the earliest.

I hurt my knee last Saturday.  It's not sharp pain; I've had far worse pain, but it's stiff and so hard to put weight on. It's mostly at the back, and up my thigh a few inches.  It's so hard to bend my knee, especially going up & down the stairs.  I have taken Motrin, then, aspirin (I think the Motrin made me nauseous on Tuesday morning, so I stopped taking it), but nothing helps. The pain keeps me awake at night, when I move in bed. I had a stretchy knee wrap thing on it on Thursday, which seemed to help a bit, but the fabric created brush burns on my skin, so I removed it.  The same for the ace bandage I had earlier. 

The pain and stiffness never totally go away, but do lessen a lot, as it did today. I even thought it had gone away, I felt so well after resting it most of the morning.  I did have a stick-on pain patch, though, and the pain came back when I removed that (after it wore off).

I can walk, but have a very pronounced limp. It hurts the most when I lower myself on the toilet, and also when I arise from any sitting position.  Wearing high heels seems to help (I think it stretched things out). I wore them all yesterday--we had our Christmas celebration yesterday, with 17 people here. I had spent 13 hours on my feet the day before, cooking and cleaning.

I've read several medical sites, but still can't figure out what the injury is. Any ideas? Thanks!

Remember when I had that meniscus tear in my left knee a couple of years ago? I was on my way back to the office one morning after my walk....on the home stretch and my knee started to hurt. And I thought, "Hmmmm, that is not good." By the end of the day, I was limping.

Your pain sounds a lot like my pain. Stiff, no weight-bearing, really hard on the stairs (at the end it was all I could do to get up and down the steps and we live in a bi-level), hard to move around in bed, hurting trying to use the toilet and arising from sitting. I'm not saying you tore the meniscus, just that those symptoms are very familiar to the ones I had. (Except for the high heels....man, that killed my knee. Since the knee operation two years ago, I'm just now getting back to the point where I can start wearing my high-heeled boots again without pain...and I can only wear them for one day. The next day, I have to go back to flats or lower heels.)

Some of my pain was actually in my leg behind my knee and that threw me off. I didn't realize that a meniscus tear could cause pain behind the knee in the back of the leg. That area would swell. It was all I could to even move the leg around in bed at night. I got to the point where I had to physically lift my leg up over the edge of the tub to get into the shower.

Definitely call your doctor first thing Monday morning and hopefully, you can get in right away and see what's going on. Meanwhile, can you ice the affected area? My ortho-weenie told me to ice regularly while waiting for the surgery....I went in for my first appt around the middle of April and never had knee surgery until mid-July.  He even gave me a "thing" for my knee that I was to keep in the freezer. 

My meniscus tear wasn't from anything in particular. Not a fall or a stretch that went wrong. Not caused by any one thing, although the ortho-weenie told me that walking 7 miles a day wasn't quite the smartest thing to do. Even walking can be hard on the knees. High heels can kill knees.

Google "Meniscus tear". There are two kinds: an inside tear and an outside tear. One is harder to heal than the other, although there is no "healing" per se. They go in and shave off the meniscus over to where the tear is. If the tear isn't really bad, often just resting the leg and taking pain pills, icing, etc. is good enough. If the tear is really bad, though, they'll go in and shave it. That's what they did with me. Since I have a fairly sedentary job, I was back to work within two weeks, taking PT 3 times a week for about two months. 

Again, I'm not saying you have a meniscus tear; it could be just a sprain or a strain, especially considering the time of the year it is and we're all doing everything at one time.

ETA: I forgot to mention that sometimes before the actual tear, my knee would "pop". And there were times, if I moved quickly or tried to turn around quickly (in the kitchen, for example), my leg would lock and if I wasn't holding on to the counter, I'd have probably gone down. I had had issues with that knee many years ago, and the ortho-weenie had told me then to expect those things. And when those things started to happen, I had to contact him right away. And, of course, I didn't. Until the pain started.