Saturday I was at our annual home owners meeting, in someone elses house, and was flexing my knee a bit just standing there, when my bubble burst! Ok, so my bubble is the “pone” above the lateral portal. (The portal is where an arthoscopic insertion point is made.) This pone had been quite large and had been growing — I should have taken a picture of it — and my PT and Dr. had both commented on it as one of the larger ones they had seen. Both said that it would eventually go away, but neither said it would burst!

I literally heard some kind of pop and splat sound. I looked down and saw what appeared to be the inside of a cherry tomato, minus the seeds, lying on the floor. It took me a minute to realize there was liquid running down my leg too, and then I finally figured out what had happened. It was a bit embarassing to say the least! Thankfully, it had happened on hardwood rather than white carpet, so it was easy to clean.

I taped it with some gauze, but it continued to drain the rest of the day. And I kind of forced some drainage later that night by flexing it a lot and massaging the liquid out. I figured while it was open, I might as well let it flow. That way there’d definitely be no need to drain it later. The liquid was clear with a very slight red/pink tint, and odorless, so it wasn’t infected inside. I then taped it pretty good and it seemed sealed the next day.

Today (Monday), I called the Dr. to let him know what happened, and he wanted to see me to make sure all was ok. So he took a look and seems happy with the knee overall. Swelling way down, the fluid seemed benign, etc. He said I should limit knee flex the next few days — so no more cycling and knee flex stretches. This is in order to allow the portal to fully heal. He explained that he had to put the portal a bit further up than normal, in order to remove a “mass of tissue” as he called it today (plica) that was where the portal would normally be. So the portal is just above a bony protrusion, and its getting rubbed from the inside.

I also explained that I had a bit of a “catching” or “grating” feeling in the medial inferior patella area. I had actually gotten a bit sore here last week so had limited some of my PT. It got worse after the fluid drain. Some of that may be due to the taping — I think the tape limited the patella movement, so there was a bit more rubbing. Or it could just be that there’s less fluid in there cushinioning it now. He didn’t seem to concerned and said to just watch in the next few days to see if that dissipates.

After the doctor appointment, I had PT, and we just did some quad sets with electro stim and leg raises with 2 lbs ankle weights and electro stim. This was somewhat more limited of what we had originally planned in light of the fluid draining and Dr.’s orders to limit flexing the knee for a few days.