Help!!! Please!!! How do you get rid of electric shock like pain in back of knee?

[realtat2895]

I am new here and I would greatly appreciate any explanations and/or solutions anyone could point me too. I am in dispair with this problem.

I have electric like pain behind my right knee so severe that I often scream. I have had it for almost 9 months, in attacks lasting a minute or less, which now come 8 to 10 times a day. At first it was milder, less frequent, and it went awayf for days at a time sometimes. Now it's a nightmare that nobody seems to have an idea how to treat.

I have treated it with chiropractic, acupuncture, massage, yoga, and a bit of traditional medicine. I have managed to change the pain, but not to beat it. And I don't know what causes it.

For me, acupuncture helped to define exactly where the pain is. Before acupuncture, the pain was so intense that it was impossible to pinpoint it.

Chiropractic solved back pain problems I used to have, but left the knee pain intact. I had thought the problem might be sciatica, but now with my back problem much better, I realize that I never had pain shooting down my leg. All my pain is behind the knee.

Massage helps temporarily by making attacks less intense and less frequent.

Yoga helped increase range of motion and reduce stiffness throughout my body and taught me to stretch various muscles, the tightness of which could possibly cause the nerve spasm, the piraformus (spelling?) and the IT band. The knowledge helps, but does not solve the problem completely.

Traditional medicine failed to tell me what the problem is, but it cost a lot of money and frustration. I tried a NSAID (non steroidal anti-inflamatory drug) called meloxicam, which does little to nothing except make me feel strange. I am still trying the drugs.

I know that I have osteoarthritis, mild osteoporosis, volatile blood pressure. Other than that I am pretty healthy and 62 years old.

At this point, I am reasonably sure that a nerve is spasming for some reason and the possible causes of the spasms are brain farts (epileptic like events or migraine like events) of some sort, a bone spur, muscle tension, a blood clot that acts like a bone spur by impinging the nerve somehow. I notice that there are micro muscle movements when I am at rest that could trigger the nerve. If I think of skiing, for example, I may trigger a micromuscle movement and thus the nerve pain. This is all speculation,

I am at my wit's end looking for a cure. The attacks exhaust me. I won't take trips because the pain makes it too unpleasant.I am pretty fit and healthy except for this problem. If anybody figures this out, please contact me. I really need help. Even a little help would be greatly appreciate. I am open to any idea. I was simply overjoyed to read on a thread here that there are other people on earth who have experienced the same thing I am going through. Unfortunately, nobody on that thread told how they fixed the problem. I also can use tips on using this forum. I

[realtat2895]

Thanks for your response. I was assuming that this is sciatica and treating it with chiropractic and acupuncture. Maybe I just concluded too soon. Non-traditional medicine takes time. What does Western medicine do for sciatica?

The extreme pain causes blood pressure problems, so that makes it a little scary. I have labile hypertension with reading ranging from 200 systolic to 80 systolic, so these jolts of electricity don't help. I doubled my dose of Toprol XL, at the recommendation of my cardiologist. I don't know if it's possible to have stable blood pressure with intermittent electric shocks that come without warning.

Is it possible to lower the nerve's "electric charge" somehow? I have heard that imagery works. Any opinion on that technique? (The idea is that with repeated pain the brain "learns" to be in pain and so to speak wears a rut that it likes to return to. With sessions of pleasant imagery, the nicer brain pathways become stronger.)

I will check into B 12. Thanks for that tip.

[Dr. Kokil Mathur]

Hi
Thanks for writing to the forum!

I read through your post carefully and entirely based on that I feel you are suffering from a variant of sciatica pain, whereby you feel the pain only behind the knee and for some reason not from hip downwards as is normally felt. Since you suffer from osteoarthritis, there is a high possibility that the sciatic nerve is compressed. Maybe the degree and place of compression is the clue for diagnosis. Maybe the nerve is compressed at the buttocks by the fascia or muscles and hence the pain is felt only behind the knee.

MRI, nerve conduction study etc should be done. Also this could be due to Vit B12 deficiency. You need a comprehensive investigation taking all these points in consideration.

Please discuss this with your doctor and get yourself investigated accordingly. Please let me know if there is any thing else and do keep me posted. Take care!