Anyone experience gout in their knee? It’s about the only thing I can come up with to explain what happened. Injury free history.
Backstory - I was riding up with some fiends for a bike ride in the mountains of NC last weekend. After 8 hours in the car, I get out stretch and my left knee feels a little tight right in the center kind of under the knee cap. No worries, we were going to go do a little ride to loosen the legs. Didn’t really do anything during ride - didn’t loosen but also didn’t hurt, more annoying. It progressively gets worse that evening to the point where I’m laying in bed that night and I cannot bend it at all. I literally have to use my hands to move my knee and it is extremely painful. Saturday morning I wake up and it is very swollen and painful. Being stubborn, I took some Advil and rubbed some bio freeze on it. I was at least going to start the ride! As I started the ride, it felt swollen but not painful so I decided to give it a bit of a go, not hammering just a nice even pace. After about 40 miles it started to hurt (it had actually been feeling swollen but painfree and I was thinking I’d get the whole ride in) but I decided to stop to play it safe. Tho safest would not to have ridden at all. The rest of Saturday and the drive back Sunday was mild pain, now it was more on the inside of the knee. Definitely could walk ok, it was just if I had to bend it and push off (like a pedal stroke). Took Monday off and felt good. I’m thinking “weird, must have been gout but at least it’s gone. Never had that before, hope it doesn’t happen again”. Ride Tuesday and about 1/2 way thru workout, inside of the knee starts to hurt again. I stop and call it a day. Take off yesterday to be safe. Go to ride today and I feel it so I stop after a mile. The frustrating part is it feels fine, perfectly fine until I get on the bike. Note that the firs part of this week was bike heavy bc I’m out of town and will be running this weekend and next week so I haven’t tried to run on it yet but walking on it and doing all the normal daily activities, it is 100% fine.
So my question - did I really have gout? I’m 28 so it would be a little weird but only thing I can think of since no prior knee issues and with how quickly it came on and how relatively quickly the extreme pain subsided.
If I did, do I just keep resting it? Any value in seeing a doctor? I hate going to a doctor especially if all he’s going to say is “rest it”. Anything I can do to speed up recovery?
Comments appreciated.