TIFU by hitting my knee back into place

Not today, but I was talking about my knee issues with someone yesterday and it reminded me of this story.

For background, I have genetic defects in both of my knees that made them prone to dislocation. They’ve since been surgically corrected, but at the time of this story, I had only ever dislocated my left knee, and it had only happened once. Because of my defects and because once you’ve dislocated a joint you’re more likely to do it again, I often wore a knee brace for any activity more than walking.

This occurred my sophomore year at band camp. It was the end of the week and I was pretty tired all around, and my knee had been getting more and more strained. We finished our marching practice for the day and headed back to the band room to put all of our instruments away.

As I always did, I went to take off the knee brace and put it in my bag. However, upon pulling it down, I noticed that my kneecap was about an inch further to the left than it should have been. The knee brace had seemingly prevented it from fully dislocating, but had then just held my kneecap slightly off center for a while. So, without a single thought entering my mind between seeing this and acting, I made a loose fist with my left hand, reached down, and bonked my knee back into place.

As you may imagine, this was not a great idea.

While my knee hadn’t hurt when I noticed it, it immediately hurt once it was knocked back. Within minutes, my knee was stiff and swollen, and when I left the band room, I was limping pretty badly. One of the band helpers thankfully noticed and got me some ice to put on it, which was helpful.

To be clear, what you’re supposed to do when your knee shifts like that is gently straighten your leg to let it slide back into place. Pushing it back is quite literally never a good idea, and if I had been less tired and used my brain, this could have been completely avoided.

Unfortunately for me, this was not the end of the troubles this caused. Through my extensive knee problems, I had found that the best way to help with knee pain like this was to sit with my leg straightened and knee relaxed, typically with ice. While I had ice, I had made a truly fatal error: this incident occurred directly before we were about to get on the buses to head back to the school from camp, which was a roughly three hour ride. So, I crammed in after taking some offered ibuprofen and hoped.

It was truly not a fun ride. We got back to the school okay, and I limped my way to the car to head home with my parents. The next day, I stayed in bed and just let my knee rest, and I was limping for the better part of a week.

TL;DR: My kneecap shifted out of place slightly and I hit it back into place without thinking, causing a large amount of pain and discomfort for me.