Severe knee pain

[Otter11]

This has been happening for the past few weeks. If I sit on a chair for a few minutes, then attempt to move my right knee, or stand up, I will experience excruciating pain all along my joint. It's mostly under my kneecap. My left knee is perfectly fine. The thing is, though, that it isn't because of long periods of inactivity. If I wake up in the morning and sit on a chair for only a few minutes, the pain will be just as bad as it would be during the rest of the day. If I come back from a walk and sit down, it still only takes a few minutes before getting up will cause pain. When I'm sitting down, my knee will quickly start to feed stiff, and my first instinct is to move it. But when I do, it starts hurting.

I don't have health insurance so I don't know if I'll be going to the doctor for a while, so I'm trying to find answers online. Any help, like what could possibly be causing it or how to ease the pain, would be much appreciated. Thanks!

[joyless123]

Those are very exactly some of the symptoms I have because of severe arthritis in my right knee. Get it looked and and start working the thigh muscle. It will help support the knee and lessen the damage you do when standing, sitting walking etc... You need to have an x-ray and see an orthopedic knee guy. Without insurance though you might try just paying for physical therapy.

[Dr. Kokil Mathur]

Hi
Welcome to the MedHelp forum!
First of all let me ask you a sensitive question. Are you by any chance overweight? Often this is the reason behind painful knees or knee (depending on which leg bears most weight) that appear to be badly aligned, do not have any structural deformity and reactive arthritis develops in response to extra wear and tear causing fluid to accumulate with activity.  This is often aggravated in the presence of hypothyroidism and diabetes. Hence even if you are not overweight, these two diseases are to be ruled out. If you are overweight, then you need to look at the cause behind the weight gain and treat this, along with supportive nutritional guidance and exercise program.
The other possibility is that what you have is a simple case of arthritis. Though gout normally affects small joints, the possibility of it isolated affecting the knee joint cannot be totally ruled out. An X-ray of the knee joint followed by MRI of the joint may be required. Please consult an orthopedic specialist. Hope this helps. Take care!

[trytobefree]

Hey im not sure if this is it but I recently had knee surgury because of the same problem, I had torn the outer miniscus in my knee they had to go in and trim the cartlige out it feels way better but still hurts sometimes, the only thing that helped before my surgury was hot then cold packs ibuprofen and alieve. The only way to find out if you need surgury is a CT scan wich is about $1000 im sorry I hope you can find a way, one thing my dr did tell me was to stay actice and not baby it to keep your leg muscles strong good luck hope you find a way to remedy your pain.