Dr. Mark,
Over the recent Memorial Day weekend I injured my knee while riding my CRF250R. I was riding down a trail when the rear end kicked to the left so I stuck my right foot down to stabalize the bike and immediately felt a very familiar pain (i ruptured the acl in my left knee back in 84 in exactly the same way). I rode to a near-by group of friends, got off the bike and tried to put weight on my right leg. The knee buckeled in a way knees are not supposed to bend and I hit the ground.
After much prompting from my friends I agreed to a trip to the ER. They did pretty much what I expected them to do, x-ray, knee immobilizer, diagnosis of knee sprain and a rx of elevation with ice and pain killers. After the ER visit, I was on crutches and non weight bearing on my injured leg for at least a week.
I made an appointment to see my orthopod as soon as I could get in. He said that I might have torn my medial collateral ligament as well as my acl along with the associated menicus damage that usually occurs with such an injury. He recommended an MRI in a couple of weeks to verify the diagnosis and then at a minimum orthoscopic surgery to clean out the knee.
The thing is that I have been unemployed since March and although I have taken out personal medical insurance as a stop gap measure, it has some pretty high deductibles and would cost me significant $ to go thru the MRI and necessary surgery.
My question is, is there anything that I can do while I am waiting until I can afford the surgery to begin to rehab the knee?
