I can't walk without knee supports, what is wrong with my knees?

[maddykingg]

Hi. I have had persistent and worsening knee pain for about a year. I have been to my GP about it explaining that I physically can't walk without wearing knee supports (often a tube support and patellar strap together!) because my knees feel like they are going to give way. My job as a waitress before being furloughed for the time being was hell and I would often be limping by the end of the shift. The GP fiddled around with my knee caps asking when I felt pain, and ending up just telling me to get physiotherapy. Which had not helped at all, and only puts pressure on my knees that causes them to hurt more. I have to use deep heat daily to numb the pain, especially in the morning. I am a pretty strong muscular person and have worked on strengthening my quads in the hope this would help my knees.
There are quite prominent dents under my kneecaps where the patellar tendon is, I guess this is where the problem is. It doesn't hurt for me to move my knee caps around at all and I have full motion of the leg, but when even standing up my knees feel SO weak.
I'm so fed up of not being able to walk, is usually be doing hiking trips this summer but not this year! If anyone knows what my problem may be and what I should be doing to help please let me know, won't be able to go to hospital for an x-ray for a while. Thanks.

[Paxiled]

Your GP sounds like someone you need to replace with a better doctor.  What you need is an orthopedic surgeon, who will get you X-rays and an MRI (your GP could have started this process, but it doesn't sound like he was at all interested in actually treating you).  You might have a condition called patella tendinitis, which does respond well to patella knee bands, but you might have something else going on.  If you had bad posture all these years that will have made it worse.  Physical therapy isn't very effective without a diagnosis so the therapist knows what they're dealing with, and they don't do diagnosis.  So get a diagnosis and go from there, and you really can't get that from a GP.  Good luck.