Lost and in pain...
My pain continued to get worse. In mid 2000, my gait became so bad due to the pain that the physio I was seeing at the time insisted on me using a crutch to weight bear, and I was reaching the point where I had little choice anyway. The crutch made me a little more mobile, but opened up a whole new world of torture. Being fifteen, at high school and using a ‘walking stick’ is not far short of hell. Many people I considered friends abandoned me, rather than be seen with ‘Granny Black’ and come in for ridicule themselves. Students who would take my crutch or kick it from under me. And the trouble with invisible pain is that people start to doubt you. More than one teacher told me to get over it and walk normally. I remember being on a school camp and waking one night to hear my friends having a discussion about whether I was faking it or not. I think that even my parents had their doubts about how real it was.
In early 2001, thanks to a new physio, I started to see some improvement and by April I was able to lose my crutch. The next eighteen months saw some ups and downs, but gradual improvement overall. By the end of 2002, although I was still in pain, still limping, and still had limited movement in my knee, I was reasonably functional.
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I had always wanted to be a vet, but knowing that I would never get the ridiculously high 99.whatever ENTER score to get into the pre-veterinary year at Melbourne Uni, I opted instead to do a double science degree at La Trobe that would give me the prerequisites to apply for a transfer to the vet course the following year. To aid my application I began volunteering at the local Donkey Shelter, which ultimately brought me undone
Over the next year or so, my mobility improved a lot. I was still in severe pain, still had difficulty bending my knee, still had problems with flare ups, but I was doing really well. At the beginning of 2005, I hurt my knee twice in as many months, both times whilst working for the shelter. Knowing what happened last time, I was reluctant to do anything about it but the pain became increasingly severe and in April I had to back down and get it looked at. The G.P. referred me to an orthopaedic surgeon, who sent me for an MRI. The MRI showed a torn medial meniscus, and I had a second arthroscopy on that knee
My pain initially improved, but within a weeks of surgery became very severe; the same pain as before, only worse. My knee and part of my lower leg were swollen and cold, and the colour change I’d experienced before had also returned. In September 2005, my surgeon told me that he suspected a condition called Reflex Sympathetic Dystrophy, or RSD. And so my nightmare proper began.