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I injured my knee in a hiking accident and left it alone for 12 years, despite it occasionally suddenly flaring up with intense pain and frequently "just not feeling right" (most notably: wouldn't lock properly). It turns out I tore my meniscus and every so often a flap of it would flip back under the kneecap (that's the intense pain thing) or it would flex a little in the wrong direction (wouldn't lock properly).

Oh, and over the 12 years it carved another channel in my thigh bone so that the bone instead of having two lobes at the end looked like it had three.

I finally got surgery on it and it was a miracle! After two weeks' recovery and six more weeks of "light duty" my leg has never felt better outside from a mildly disturbing ability to flex in a direction it shouldn't be able to.

Rode a bus that, to avoid an accident, stomped the brakes hard. (How hard? The bus was packed. After the braking, it was only about 3/4 full...) In the process got my back twisted to a bad angle and then crushed by the weight of the compressed crowd. I felt a little electric jolt in my lower spine that within two days had my hips on down to my toes feel like I was being roasted alive nonstop with a blow torch. I'd blown a disc and the liquid kind of bulged against my spinal cord.