Knee Pain Through the Lens of Schizoaffective Disorder

For the past six weeks, my left knee has been causing me a lot of pain. The pain is flaring up as I sit to write this. It may have been caused by doing a stretch during an online ballet class--I honestly don’t know what caused it. What I do know is that it hurts a lot, and it’s wreaking havoc on my schizoaffective anxiety and schizoaffective depression.

How Knee Pain Affects My Schizoaffective Disorder

First of all, although I suffer from frequent migraines, I wouldn’t say I’ve been in this kind of constant physical pain before. Also, the migraines usually come at night before I go to sleep and are gone in the morning. This is different. I can barely walk at times. I haven’t been able to go for my daily walks outside. This has caused me to sink into a deep cavern of schizoaffective depression, with some anxiety thrown in for good measure.

A lot of the anxiety has been caused by driving to the doctor to get my knee checked out. You see, I have a phobia of driving, especially driving in the snow. (I know, I know, Chicago is probably the wrong city for me.) But I made myself drive to the doctor today--even with the threat of snow--because I’ve read or heard from multiple sources that the only way out of driving phobias is to move your way through them. I’m happy to report that I didn’t get into an accident. I didn’t even get honked at.

Schizoaffective Disorder and Worrying About My Knee

Driving to the doctor is not the only source of my anxiety surrounding my knee, though. I’m worried about my knee. I don’t know what’s wrong with it, though my general practitioner has suggested a torn meniscus, the cartilage that cushions the bones at the shin and thigh. The holidays are coming up, and I don’t want my knee to be messed up over the holidays. I get depressed just thinking about that.

I’ve seen two doctors about my knee, and I’ve had X-rays done. The X-rays show that I don’t have arthritis, so that’s a relief. Now I need to get a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scan done to look at the tissue inside the knee. I called a place to get the MRI done and it’s scheduled for next week.

Waiting for phone calls from doctors is also a big source of stress and anxiety for me, and a lot of that’s been going on as I try to figure out what’s wrong with my knee. I always thought having something wrong inside my head was worse than having something wrong with my body. But I’d never had something significantly wrong with my body like this before. Sure, it could be true that my mental illness is making this experience of having a knee problem worse. But I’ll never take my physical health for granted again.