I had surgery on 9/7/2005… The Doctor had wanted to do a lateral release last August, but I decided to go the PT route. But it became obvious that I wasn’t going to get back to the levels I wanted to be at — i.e. to be able to train for and compete in 2 to 3 day adventure races. Maybe I’ll never get there but I at least needed to try to improve the current situation.

I asked the Doctor to do an exploratory scope with minor clean up, but that if he found anything major — i.e. anything that would take months of recovery, to not do it. Anything minor, meaning 4 – 6 weeks of recovery, he should do.

So he went in and this is what he found. The most surprising thing is the upper left picture, which is a “gap” in the tissue of the knee underneath the supra patella pouch. This gap was tethered to several places, perhaps to keep it from separating more. The Dr. thinks these tethers were limiting the patella’s movement, so he trimmed off the tethers and got rid of the gap. He’s fairly optimistic that at least this will help a fair amount. I may still need an LR some day — only time will tell. The other pictures are standard grade 2 chondromalacia, and he cleaned all the loose ends up, etc.

Here are the “after” pictures where everything is cleaned up.

“Smooth as a babies bottom…” Well, not quite. The resolution of this image isn’t quite there but the lower left picture does show a bit of a bumpy surface.

(Originally written on 9/12)

I should have started a “knee blog” a long time ago, so I’d have more history. I’ll give a very brief one now and maybe expand on it later.

* age 1 – slight club foot required cast for on R foot for 6 weeks
* age 18 – slid tackled into cement block wall playing indoor soccer. Initial diagnosis was displacement fracture but after going to a specialist he said the knee cap had grown from two centers and that I just had a severe bruise. Just needed a few months of rest.
* age 23 — training for 3rd marathon, the one in Atlanta on Thanksgiving, when on last long run, knee got sore for about 10 minutes during run but then was ok for the last couple of miles. Then it got really sore that night and remained sore, had to drop out of race. Thought it was ITBS.
* Then struggled with lateral R knee pain for next 10 years, off and on, though was able to complete many short and long adventure races, triathlons, do lots of hiking, etc. It was always just balancing soreness with training level.
* In July of 2004, backing off no longer helped and I got so sore I could barely move my leg. MRI revealed bone contusion on femur and patella — diagnosis was patella tracking issues. Next 8 or 9 months was tons of rest, ice, and PT to strenghten VMO, stretch ITBS, Rolfing work, etc. Slowly got back to running 4 – 5 miles and mountain biking up to 90 minutes, but always felt some tenderness. I put off surgery for a few months as we had several trips planned that I didn’t want to ruin.

It’s now 5 days after surgery and I’m walking without crutches and starting to use the R knee a bit more. Running errands yesterday was probably a bit much as it did get tired and sore, but I iced it and elevated it for some time when we got home and it feels better today. Still not driving.