Linda X
Linda has COPD (Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease), neuralgia and a very painful right knee. She sometimes struggles with her mental health, including feeling tearful and worried. Linda is also a carer for her husband, who has dementia.
Linda is retired. She is married and has two daughters and also grandchildren.
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Linda’s right knee is very painful and swollen. She also has COPD (Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease), neuralgia, and sometimes feels upset and anxious. Linda lives with her husband, who has dementia, and one of their two daughters, who is their registered carer. Linda takes carbamazepine for her neuralgia, antidepressants, and ibuprofen for her painful knee. Although Linda’s knee problem gets her down, she thinks these mental health concerns are separate and existed before her knee problems. Linda’s painful knee makes it difficult to walk and, coupled with her COPD, she gets out of breath. Linda tries to keep her leg elevated to reduce the pain and she is not able to leave her home very often.
Linda thinks her knee problems started many years ago when she was hit by a car and knocked her off her bike. She then had a fall last year and thinks this injury “was trauma on trauma”. Because her fall happened in the first COVID-19 lockdown, Linda didn’t think she could go to hospital. It was several months later, when Linda was getting her flu jab, that she learnt she could have gone to be checked out at hospital: “That really, really upset me because I might not be in this state, I’m in now”. Linda had an x-ray taken and a steroid injection into her knee but this didn’t help, so Linda’s GP referred her to a surgeon.
Linda is waiting for her first appointment to talk to a surgeon. It will be a phone call and she is reassured that her daughter will be with her. Linda doesn’t know what to expect about the surgery – for example, whether she will be awake (local anaesthetic) or asleep (general anaesthetic) during the operation. She is worried that she will have to lie down flat, which is difficult because of her COPD and breathing. She has never had an operation before, and she is scared about being in hospital alone.
Linda doesn’t feel there is any other option for her knee problems than surgery: “I’ve got to do something […] get my life back”. Linda hopes that knee surgery will mean she can get outside more, especially in the summer. Linda looks forward to going shopping and to the garden centre with her daughter.
Linda X had been knocked off her bike by a car many years ago and she thought a recent fall had been “trauma on trauma”.
Linda X had been knocked off her bike by a car many years ago and she thought a recent fall had been “trauma on trauma”.
Well, this is how I think, years ago when I was working a car knocked me off my bike,
Oh no.
And that knee - so I’m on the floor yeah, my bike, and my leg is bent up and on his bumper.
Oh gosh.
If you, can you see that? As he come round the corner, he took me off my bike and that [knee] was pushed up, under my chin. My right leg.
And I think that fall I had last, last March at [granddaughter's place], it was just before lockdown, or just, yeah, I fell over her front doorstep which had a metal piece.
Oh gosh.
Yeah, yeah. And it all started from there. And I think it was trauma on trauma.
Linda X has chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and gets out of breath when walking and her knee is very painful. She rarely leaves the house.
Linda X has chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and gets out of breath when walking and her knee is very painful. She rarely leaves the house.
Well, the knee at the moment. I’m in bed now, I haven’t got dressed. The pain in my knee is bad, and that depressed you a bit, because I haven’t been out for well - that’ll be two years March.
Has it been that long?
[Laughs]
Oh.
I just get out of breath now and then. Yeah, but otherwise I can struggle on, no, I’m alright.
Well, the knee gets in the way because I can’t walk properly so I do get out of puff, so I do get out of breath, yeah.
Otherwise, no. I’m, we live in a mobile home, it’s not going upstairs or anything so half the time I’m laid, I’m in bed and I get up and we’ve got a recliner so I can put my leg up then.
So, it’s, yeah, and I can’t sit really on a chair because it just, at the back of the knee it’s just so, so painful, I just have to elevate my leg all the time, yeah.
Linda X, who had COPD, had never had an operation before and she was worried that lying flat would make it harder to breathe.
Linda X, who had COPD, had never had an operation before and she was worried that lying flat would make it harder to breathe.
[Sigh] well it’s more the COPD, if, if I have to go for this operation, oh, please don’t lay me flat [laughs]. That, that worries me very much and I’m a bit scared because I’ve never had an operation before.
So, it’s more or less just, just my breathing I think, and I’m just frightened because at the moment you can’t have anybody with you.
Yeah, at my age, I’m a bit scared. Yeah. I’d be on my own and I have not sort of had an operation in that sense. I had a D&C donkey’s years ago. It was a different thing altogether.
You know, and that’s the only time, except having the girls, yeah. I think that might be it. And if I have to lay flat, but I keep being told you’ll get an epidural. Because of your breathing, because you have COPD.