State of the knee: Not too bad

[haggholm]

A few weeks ago, I came home from judo and jiu-jitsu feeling fine, went to bed, and woke up with a sore knee. It wasn’t bad, and there was no swelling, so I didn’t feel too concerned. It’s stayed a bit tender for the past several weeks—no pain for the most part, except when extending it fully, or when subject to lateral strain (as e.g. a couple of times in jiu-jitsu last night, when I had to tap out to positions that would not ordinarily be any concern). It was still mild, but it was time to go to a doctor just in case, in particular because I’ve never suffered knee injury and so I don’t know what’s appropriate to shrug off and what to get checked out.

The doctor, after asking and prodding and looking, seemed quite confident that it was merely a light strain or sprain of the medial collateral ligament (MCL)—no tear and no tendon damage, and it’s quite normal for full recovery to take three weeks or so. Thus, I will continue to play it safe in jiu-jitsu and tap out to discomfort (stupid to make it worse), but there seems to be no reason to be very concerned.

This established, I exchanged some remarks about British comedy in general and Monty Python in particular with the doctor, and left. Now back to work.