Knee Injury - Dr Told Me To Keep Excercising But Feels Very Painful

Hi

8 months ago I started going to the gym. Gradually building up what I did. I'm at the point now where I do 30 mins of cardio and a few weights 3 times a week.

Over the past couple of weeks I've started experiencing knee pain over the front and side of my knee. It's worse each time I exercise. There's lots of grinding and clunking in my knee. On two occasions it has locked (straight) and I've had to force it to clunk in order to move. Over the weekend if you put your hand on my kneecap you could feel my knee cap jumping as I straightened and flexed my leg. My knee feels very weak and wobbly.

I went to the Drs on Monday and she gave me some Naproxen and told me to continue exercising (a bit more gently) and see how I get on. I'm quite worried about this as I don't want to do any further damage and my knee is so wobbly and clunky it feels wrong.

I should mention that I had a tibia lengthening on the affected leg some years ago. That when I was in plaster the cast they put on my knee was incorrect and it pushed my knee strangely, on one occasion I heard a pop and had a lot of pain and the Drs changed my cast. I'd imagine the leg itself is a little weak as it got quite wasted whilst I wasn't able to walk.

Is it sensible to go back to working out? Or should I go back to my Dr? What's the best way to try and get my knee back to normal?

Oh I forgot to say that the past few times I've exercised, afterwards my knee has felt like it's having warm water poured into it and will feel really tingly and burny. The main pain is behind my kneecap but I'm getting it down the outer side of my knee too. I think I'm starting to walk funny because it hurts and the end of my quadricep (nearest to the knee cap) feels all weak and feeble now also.