We are just over a week back from our wonderful UK holiday. I have been buoyed up by all our adventures, but now it is back to the reality of life. Not that this is a bad thing necessarily!
One thing that is becoming increasingly difficult for me to manage is the significant pain in my right knee. I can only stand in one spot for a minute or two before the pain gets too much and I either need to stand on one leg or lean on a walking stick. When I get dressed in the morning, I have to sit down to put my underwear, trousers or socks and shoes on as I cannot stand on my right leg to put my other leg in. My knee crunches when I walk and frequently feels like it is out of alignment and often when I try to straighten my knee it crunches, causing me more pain.
In New Zealand, an entity called ACC or Accident Compensation Corporation covers New Zealand citizens for accidents. This could include covering 80% of wages if unable to work. It can also include things like Physiotherapy, GP visits and specialists. Plus, it can cover travelling to work by taxi if I cannot drive. It can also cover an operation if this is needed.
Just before I went to the UK with my husband, ACC informed me that they would not continue to cover my knee injury as they are now saying that the cause of my knee pain is arthritis. As such – so they say – it is not an accident. I have argued till I am blue in the face with the representatives of ACC that – although I have known arthritis in my knees – my arthritis in my knees has never caused me actual pain. It has made me feel uncomfortable if I keep my knees in any position too long, but I would not say that I have previously had any actual pain as such. Also, I argued that even if it were arthritis related in part, that arthritis does not go from no pain to excruciating pain overnight! I am in the process of asking for a review and am gathering evidence to support my claim. They even intimate that I cannot possibly have a torn meniscus as the ‘mechanism of injury’ described ie. Aqua jogging, could not have caused such an injury. This despite the fact that I have had scans and expert opinions that I have. Plus, I have all the symptoms they said in their letter that I would have if I had a torn meniscus. Which I do!!!!! Aaaaaargh!
So, as usual I am trying to do my best to work through the pain and get on with things. This is proving more and more difficult. One example of my difficulty is that it has taken me two days to unpack my case. This is because standing to sort things out and walking about to put things away has caused me significant pain. So, I can only stand for about 5 minutes or 10 at a pinch to do anything! It is very frustrating for someone who is usually able to get on with things and push the pain to the back of my conscious mind. This pain, I’m afraid, is too much for me to be able to continue to do so. I am in pain constantly!
The problems with this are many. It makes it difficult at work on many levels. I often have to take a chair in to patients’ rooms to sit on, but at the moment, any extra weight brings on the pain. So, carrying a chair would cause me pain. I have to walk around the ward a lot and that is proving difficult, and I can hardly walk by the end of the day. I have asked for permission to park closer to the building where I work. These spots are usually for afternoon workers, or there are Disability Parking spaces, which you need a permit for. Something I currently do not have. I am going to my GP on Thursday and will ask him to sign off for a temporary Mobility Parking Permit for 6 months. I have lined up with my Physio, GP and Specialist to see them all to see if they can assist me in my battle with ACC. I hope that with their expertise they can assist me in my negotiations with ACC and they will cover me. I am starting to feel more and more that I will need an operation. The problem is, if ACC won’t pay for it, then I will have to try and find the money somehow. Operations such as a knee operation, could however, be expensive, somewhere in the region of $20,000 to $30,000 is not unlikely.
At the moment I am using walking stick wherever I go. I need something to help ease the pain, so that I can get around in some fashion, albeit with a limp! The frustrating thing is that the side the knackered knee is on is my ‘good’ side, ie. not my Parkies side. I have absolutely no mobility issues with my Parkies as yet, so it should not be necessary for me to have a walking stick. It feels like I have been projected forward in my Parkies life to a state where I can’t walk unaided. Quite frankly, it sucks!! Bigtime!
I can only hope that the evidence I am gathering and the opinions of the ‘experts’ in my life can support me to challenge ACC and then from there if they agree to cover me, then I might be able to have an operation to sort this stupid knee out.
One issue is that I cannot really exercise. I put my gym membership on hold while we were in the UK, with the intention of going back post holiday. That feels like an impossibility right now, so I am going to need to consider whether I need to cancel my gym membership. That would be a backward step in my battle against Parkinson’s, because as we know ‘Exercise is Medicine’ which leaves me unable to partake in this medicine pretty much at all right now. I can’t even ride my lovely red e-bike which sits taunting me and gathering dust in our garage. I will be so ticked off if I can’t ride it anymore.
This does not do much to help my mood while everything is painful and while it also goes unrecognised the additional stress this puts on me. Being strong is not always the easiest thing. At times I think I can hold a small ‘pity party’ just for me, while I feel sorry for myself for a bit. I won’t let it take over my life but it is certainly a challenge on a daily basis.
Hopefully, within the next few weeks I will have a positive outcome and ACC will see sense and cover me.
Until then, I continue to hobble through life hoping something will happen in the near future to solve this problem knee.
My journey with Parkinsons 
Hey Nanna can you still get referred to public ortho to be waitlisted for an operation and then continue the ACC fight so that if ACC doesn’t come through you would have had that time waiting on a public list
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Hi Vic. Thanks. I am seeing my GP this week and will ask him to refer to public for the waitlist. I am also seeing my Physio, trying to get together some clinical support for my challenge to ACC’s ruling. I also see my Orthopaedic Surgeon on the 21st and will see what he recommends and if he will comment on the huge amount of documentation that I was sent by ACC. He said before I went away that if this injection didn’t work that I might need ‘a nasty operation’ on my knee! It will be doubly nasty if I have to pay for it! I am also going to apply for a temporary Disabled Parking Permit for maybe 6 months so that I don’t have to walk so far in carparks. Can also use it at work, so I can part closer to the building. Every little bit helps, but this knee is really getting bad. There are times when I can hardly put any weight on it.
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You shouldn’t have to pay though, you can still go on a public wait-list for it and it should get triaged according to need too so you’d imagine that given all you have said it would rank quite highly!
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Hi Vic. I will definitely ask to be referred to the public waitlist. I just hope it doesn’t take too long one way or another. I am finding the pain quite difficult to cope with. Only being able to stand in one place for 5 minutes at a time is pretty tricky when you’re trying to work and just plain old live your life!
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I hope all this can be sorted out for you. Sounds horrendous!
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It is rather horrible. Constant pain is very tiring! Hopefully something can be sorted before too long as it is starting to get to me rather a lot! 😦
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I’m assuming you don’t have medical insurance (years ago, we downsized ours to ‘extras only’, so just dental and optical cover).
Is the Public System an option for you? If you are in constant pain surely you would be on a high priority waiting list?
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Hi Ralph. No we don’t have medical insurance. I have a raft of different conditions that mean that any insurance would be very costly. I tried to get income replacement insurance years ago and was told if they covered me, the premium would be 3x the normal and that was before Parkies was diagnosed! I am going to see my specialist and see what he says on the 21st. I’m hoping he can write something to convince ACC that it is appropriate to cover me. I am also going to my GP this week, so will ask him if he can get me on the public waitlist. Hate to think how long that might be though!!!
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I hope that you’re feeling a bit better. It may be of no use whatsoever to you but my knee benefited a lot from DrScholls shoe inserts. They’re available from pharmacies and there’s a particular design for knee issues. They are about $35.00 I had expensive orthotics made to measure by a podiatrist but they actually made my knee worse!
Good luck with all your appointments and have a lovely Maori New Year, if you’re celebrating. I don’t really know what that involves, I just saw it on the news.
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Hi Rebecca. I’m afraid my knee seems to be getting progressively worse each day. I have an appointment with my specialist on 21st to see what can be done. Battling with ACC on top of everything is exhausting. Not sure any shoe inserts would help, but thanks for the thought. Have my grandchildren with me for Matariki and went to a night market with fireworks Friday night, so that was fun. Other than that just spending time with them is nice after being away two months.
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Really genuinely sorry to hear that the knee is still painful. It must get you down. 😞❤️
Glad you were still able to have a good time with your family.
After much searching and trial and error, I have finally found an exercise program that I really like. It’s free on YouTube, called Yes2next. She’s a Asian (Japanese?) American woman in her fifties and she does the different programs with her mother who is in her eighties and whom, I suspect, may have had a stroke in the past. It’s very good because she shows how each exercise can be increased in difficulty / intensity and also vice versa. Mum usually does her exercises sitting down. Very adaptable to personal circumstances. I thought of you this morning when I was doing it, because her mum was seated for most of it, but was still doing enough exercise to raise her heart rate.
Here’s a link to one episode if anyone is interested
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Hi. Thanks I’ll take a look. Thanks for sharing and caring! 🙂
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