Glucosamine Chondroitin
I have a bad knee. I tore my ACL playing football in highschool, had surgery, then later on when I was boxing, I wasn’t wearing my knee brace in the ring and the bounciness of the ring led me to twist my knee nicely, tearing some cartilage and stretching out my replacement ACL, so I had surgery again.
So now, my entire right leg is a bit weaker than it should be. I regularly twist my right ankle, and from time to time my knee aches with the weather and every blue moon it swells up slightly. Right now it is swollen and has been for about two weeks, although the first week it was uncomfortably swollen. About a week ago, I twisted my ankle nicely and somehow that decreased the swelling in my knee.
In any case, shortly after my original surgery, this used to happen quite a bit. My knee would swell up. I’d go into the doctor’s office. The doctor would drain the fluid from the knee and then give me a shot of cortisone in the knee. So, Friday, I went to my doctor’s appointment and told him all this and he checked out the knee and he said I should start taking glucosamine chondroitin for a while and see if that helps. If the swelling doesn’t go down fully in a few weeks or if it increases, I’m supposed to go back in and see him. We’ll see.
The downside of this advice is that it comes in huge horse pills that I have to take with each meal; three a day.
In other news, I now have a new bike, so I can start riding again and that should help the knee nicely.
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December 3rd, 2006 at 1:02 pm
[...] So, yesterday, we shot out to Long Island. I was working on Netscape during the first half of the day, while Kristin went to teach dance and then attended Laura’s baby shower. In the afternoon, Curt took me over to a bike store in Malverne, and I got to pick out a bike for my Christmas present from Curt and Marian. I got a Raleigh bike (similar to this model). It will be good to have a bike again. I haven’t had one since my old mountain bike got stolen from my apartment building in the Bronx back in 2001. It’s supposed to be the best kind of exercise for my bad knee, and bike-riding has been something I’ve enjoyed since I was a kid. My first bike had a plastic facade to make it look like a little motorcycle, complete with a little plastic flipper that hit the wheel spokes as I pedaled and made a noise like an motorbike engine revving up. I used to ride that thing all around my neighborhood and ramp off of dirt hills that the local kids put together on the weekends where they were going to build more houses. Once I jumped off this huge dirt mound and came flying off the bike, landing on top of the handlebar which was sticking straight up and landed just north of crotch, leaving a ringed welt just beneath my belt line, teaching me the good lesson to never let go of the bike when airborne. [...]
December 4th, 2006 at 6:14 pm
I love my mountain bike too! We all have kid bike stories like that!
My body too takes a beating from riding and running. I started taking Glucosamine a couple months ago too. Will report results soon!
Stuff I take: Glucosamine
And no, not the size of horse pills -
December 4th, 2006 at 6:15 pm
sorry, I retyped that 3x, browser went crazy, please delete 2!!!!
thanks
December 6th, 2006 at 2:56 pm
Take Motrin or it’s generic equivalent. Trust me on this, it will help with the swelling and I know swelling.