Bill Parravano: Hello! And welcome to Session 14 of your Knee Pain Questions Answered. My name is Bill Parravano and I have a question that says -- I had received an email that says, I had a partial knee replacement in June of 2008. I have been plagued with constant pain in my incision site. My doctor has prescribed Novocaine patches that I wear on my knee, which masks the pain so that I am able to be comfortable in clothing. I am beginning to notice other pain symptoms in my knee, which makes me believe that I'm going backward instead of forward after my surgery. Can you explain what this intense pain is in my incision site.
Thank you very much for your question, and yes, I can explain what's going on at the incision site.
You have in your body, what is called connective tissue, or fascia and when we have an injury or a cut, you generally have that, it's that hard tissue that forms underneath the skin after the cut is healed and what that is, is that is the connective tissue holding your body together underneath the skin. It also can be know as scar tissue. Same thing, connective tissue, scar tissue. Scar tissue is just connective tissue holding together at this site of an injury.
So what happens is this pulls very tight underneath the skin of your knee and it causes a tension pattern that can be compensated in other areas, specially in your knee. So what's happening is it's injury compensation, the body naturally moves away from pain to a position of comfort. So, when you have this incision in your knee, the body will hold on to that tension at the site of the incision, compensating for that incision and you end up feeling it in other places as well.
You can think of it the same way as when you make a bed. If you tie the knot in the sheet, which would be the incision site, when you go to make the bed, it's going to be very difficult to stretch the sheet out to cover the entire bed because of the knot in the sheet. The body functions in a very similar fashion.
So, if you really wanted to pull that sheet tight, what's going to happen, you're going to feel it at that incision site, as well as, the tension in those other areas at the edges of the sheet, that you can't pull to cover the entire bed.
I hope that analogy helped a little bit. The body is a very dynamic organism. Your body can do phenomenal things and the analogy sometimes don't fully describe exactly what's going on in your body. However, that's the best mental picture, I'm able to paint to help you understand what's going on at the incision site and in other areas of your knee.
So, hopefully that helps. If that did not, please email me back at Bill@TheKneePainGuru.com. What will also help with that is I have written an eBook that has extensive exercises that will address a lot of the tension, that's going on in your knee causing the pain, swelling, discomfort. You could also access that on my website too. That is thekneepainguru.com. So, thank you so much and we will see you next time. Talk to you soon, bye-bye.
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