When is knee pain a serious problem?

[beautifulangel76]

I dislocated my knee back in August of last year. I am still experiencing pain to this day. I have went to the doctor and he told me to go to physical therapy a couple times and do the exercises at home on my own. I do them everyday 40 reps right before I go to bed. Sometimes the pain gets so bad that I can barely handle it. I don't take pain medicine because it never helps. I have tried lots of things from doing my exercises, walking around my house, heat/ice, hot baths, and trying pain relieving exercises but nothing helps. The only thing that really help is wearing my brace but after awhile it starts to hurt me a little. I have to go back to see the doctor on the 15th of next month. The pain in mostly in the back of my knee and on the outside of it (it's my right knee). I can do things normally except there have been a couple times where I would fall because if I couldn't walk for a couple seconds but I dont know if that was related to my knee. Is this a sign that this is something serious?

[ak666]

It might be difficult to find professional medical advice, unless someone went through the same thing.

You might try getting a second opinion from another doctor, and that would be my main suggestion.

I read that the ordinary time for knee dislocations is 6 weeks, so this sounds like an unusual case.

On your end, apparently those strengthening exercises are really beneficial, but you're doing them already. Nevertheless, it's worth keeping up the effort.

One thing you might want to do is that, *maybe*, your sleeping patterns are aggravating the injury. It might help to kind of learn to sleep on your back with your leg elevated.

Some of the muscle injuries I sustained in my youth ended up diminishing faster after I forced myself to sleep on my back (I always preferred to sleep sideways or face-down).

Anyway, I hope someone with a bit more expertise can pitch in here, but these are a couple of things to try.

[abc3643]

You might have a Baker's Cyst.

[beautifulangel76]

My knee isn't stiff or tight and there's no lump.