Hey Porgeous.

I was a sufferer of diagnosed Miserable Malalignment Syndrome, from when I was eight up to now (I am now 17). I am still undergoing minor treatment.
What you described did not sound like the condition I had (which has since been cured by a series of operations, though I still have minor operations to undergo in order to complete the treatment, as well as physiotherapy). However, I was told that I had a very extreme case - I didn't suffer from joint pain, but my kneecaps would subluxate (pop out, then pop back in again - mini dislocations, you could say) without warning. As a result, I couldn't run or jump, only walk quickly. I was pulled out of gym lessons in high school, and often had to sit out of the lessons in primary school as my knees would pop out during the warm ups.

I was diagnosed when I was ten, I think (by a chiropodist, oddly enough, who referred me to my consultant), and was given physiotherapy to try and reduce the problem. I knew I would have to have surgery, but my consultant wanted to postphone it until my growth plates had closed. On the X-rays, it could be seen that my femurs were twisted (inwards, I think - unfortunately I didn't understand a lot of what was being said at the time, and cannot remember it now), and my tibias were twisted in the opposite direction. This caused the instability of my patellas. Another thing that may have been related was that I had a pronounced bunion on my right foot, unusual for such a young age.

I had the first surgery when I was thirteen or fourteen, when both of my patellas fully dislocated within eight days of each other. My right patella would not go back in, and so I had to wear a cricket splint on both legs for months. They dislocated around Easter time, and I had the surgery on my right leg in September, I think. During the surgery, my femur was broken in two, and twisted, to straighten it. A metal rod was put down the centre of the bone, and pinned in place. Rather than break my tibia fully, the surgeon cut into it, lifting a flap of bone and pulling it across and pinning it, the act of which effectively straightened the lower leg.

The same operation was carried out on my left leg in June the next year (the knee had dislocated again that January, but I had succeeded in putting it back in myself before the paramedics arrived). I had a third operation, on my right ankle. This was to straighten it after the first surgery, as when the leg was straightened, the ankle was turned out by forty five degrees or more. Also, the pins in both tibias were removed, to dynamise the femurs (they were very slow in healing). This was a minor operation compared to the previous two.

My future operation is to remove the metalwork in my ankle, and to inject bone marrow from my hip into my left femur as it has failed to calcify (I've been walking around with a broken leg for a year and didn't know it). This, and the following physiotherapy, should end my treatment.

I know there are only a few similarities between our cases, but I wouldn't disregard the possibility of you having MMS entirely, as each case is bound to be different. I was told that it is a fairly common syndrome, usually in tall, slim girls who grow quickly (as I did), but that most do not suffer from symptoms as the twist in their bones is not very pronounced, as mine was.

To your later post, I'd guess that all of the symptoms were related, but this is purely my opinion, and I may be wrong.

From what you've said, pain is one of your major symptoms. I did not experience this before the surgeries, but I naturally have a high pain threshold, made higher by the subluxations and surgery recovery periods (these ranged from nine months to four, at a guess, for my ankle). Just because I did not experience pain does not mean our conditions are different, and so I'd advise you to do what I did - consult a specialist orthopaedic surgeon for a proper diagnosis, as well as arrange physiotherapy sessions if you haven't already. I wish you the best of luck, whatever the outcome of your hospital visits, and I hope that it can be resolved. I know having your life restricted to how far you can walk can be the most irritating thing, and in your case painful, but with luck, you'll be able to beat it and have the life you want. Good luck, and I hope this helps.