Patellar tendonitis on both knees?

Question

11 weeks ago I was diagnosed with a mild case of tendonitis. I had been feeling pain and tenderness for the past 2 months. I could run 2 miles and not be sored, but whenever I jumped I felt pain. The doctor gave me 1 month and a half of R.I.C.E., which I followed. Much improvement, but there was still tenderness. So he gave me 1 1/2 more months, I have the appointment in 4 days, It has been slowly improved since i staretd resting but its still a little tender like 5 percent of how it was at the beggining. I fear the ****** is oing to tell me to lay down on the couch for another 6 weeks, now that is summer and i could have all the time in the world to train. I have taken a ton of Ibuprofen, done strecthing, bought the knee brace level 2, and ice 5 times a day. I want advice on how long it will take for me to be able to play basketball again, i mean its already been 3 months, also if some surfaces would be better for me to start running a little, like grass or dirt, and any other suggest

Answer 1

tendonitis is a wear and tear injury it was something that happend in a split second like a sprain. Patellar tendonitis took a while to form and it is going to take a while to heal. Believe me when I say I know how frustrating an injury could be, I stopped counting injuries at 28 including patellar. So knowing that this is a wear and tear injury that means anything you do will continue to bother it. It took me about 5 months to get over my injury and it didn't get better until I left school for the summer because than I could literally sit on the couch all day long and do nothing with my knees. I became very good at couch abs and couch push ups. Couch abs is when commercials come on you do a different ab workout for every commercial and couch pushups is when you put your feet on the sofa and your hands on the floor and you do pushups. Than I went back to the doctor and he told me to try running in the pool if I wanted to. There is no impact in the water at all. You just go to the deep end and start running. It is hard to get the hang of in the beginning but after a little bit you will get the hang of it. It works really good with keeping you in shape. One of my athletes got hurt about 3 weeks into cross country and I had her running in the pool and the week before the district meet she was allowed to run again and not only did she run at districts but she qualified to run the state meet.  So give your knees as much of a break as they need and start running in the pool to keep in shape and keep you occupied.