r/Kneesovertoes

I I'm 27 male 6'1 180.. previous to my injury at 22yrs old I played sports all growing up and baseball in highschool. Left my parents at 18 got a job working on barges off a dock, payed like 60-70k a year and was pretty demanding, I was dedicated in the gym throughout this time hitting decent lifts 300 squat, 265 bench.. did a push pull leg and strict diet. just a normal hard working kid for the most part. This is gonna sound stupid but I started to become somewhat addicted to my gaming PC playing cod warzone and I even started missing workouts to play the game, so one day I said this is enough and sold it to a family friends kid for 200$.. boom I was back in the gym and more dedicated than ever, I decided to take up Basketball as well, this is where it all went wrong. Think I would play like 2hrs after workout and I'd say about a week or 2 in I noticed small pain in my knee, nothing too serious.. I ignored it and continued playing, slowly but surely the pain got worse of course. Then started the typical boom bust cycle. Over the period of the next 6 months the pain would get bad then I would rest a week then they would get bad again ect. Till one day I said welp this is obviously going to continue so I quit basketball and I thought the pain would go away as long as I didn't play.. and it did for about 2 weeks then that original pain appeared one day at work and within 2 months I had to quit my job as the pain grew.. I went to physical therapy and got a landscape job that was less demanding but nevertheless the pain kept creeping with vengeance. Over the next 3 years of multiple pts saying they could fix me and even trying KOT the pain got worse and worse. Till I said enough was enough and I quit my job which at the time all I really did was sit on a zero turn mower making 18hr and decided to get surgery with the orthopedic saying this would be some kind of a magical fix.. I got something called a Tibia tuberle osteotomy and it was a nasty procedure with a 1 year recovery and it did absolutely nothing for my pain.. literally feels the same as the other knee.. this was 2 years ago, before surgery I had around 80,000$ saved up over my years of working and the year I was "recovering" I spent around 30k of it.. after all this I literally could not work anymore due to my injury. Every step hurt, even a 1 inch squat would feel like someone was taking a razor knife and jabbing below my kneecap, can't really walk around for more than 5-10 minutes without severe dullpain/burning forcing me to rest, atrophy quads due to the pain. Squatting absolutely off the table, 1 inch step up hell no. But what really sucks is not the actual pain, it's the I really can't enjoy a lot aside from electronics and hanging out with my family. All and any sports are off the table, fishing, hunting, anything that involves any moving around is gone. Well this is where things take a dark turn and say what u want idc. But this obviously took a huge mental and physical toll on me and I was at the time an occasional Adderall abuser and I decided f it f my life f everything and tried Meth for the first time about a year ago. Trust me I know how it sounds, but I literally hated myself and the world, I didn't enjoy anything and when I tried Meth it seemed like the world was green again.. yes my knees still hurt like hell but the drug kinda made me not care. Anyway over the next 6 months of drug abuse this obviously led to destruction. I went to rehab, I've been clean for 7 months now and found God on the way. Even met God twice btw which I plan on coming public about in the near future. When my addiction started I had around 50k and blew all of it except like 10k left when I went to rehab. I got out of rehab about 1 month ago and bought a car with what little money I had left and now I literally live out of my car and do door dash. I have all the qualifications to work on barges, load and empty them, move them ect. But I just don't have the body and it's a sad and pitiful existence it feels like most of the time but I have the Lord and hopefully he'll save me from this godforsaken place. I think all the time about getting high but I can't turn my back on him. Maybe I will try physical therapy again but I've just been to so many I've only gotten worse and see little to no hope in it. I've accepted that this is just the way things are, it does bother me knowing God can fix them yet he doesn't. I want to believe there's a reason he doesn't but I can't see a valid one. That's pretty much my testimony, pretty shitty ik. Wish I had a success story for y'all but I don't.. if I had any recommendations it would be if your in sport or gym ect, if you start to feel a little pain take it seriously, before getting injured I didn't even know it was possible to fuck up my knee, never had a injury before. I did it to myself but also I'd like to say the medical community failed me as well. you don't realize what u had till it's gone, good luck everyone God bless