The Case of the Sore Knee

My knee has bothered me a long time. For awhile it was unstable, and I struggled to move left or right sharply without it "wiggling", which brought about intense pain for a few minutes. I learn in softball and baseball not to take off without turning and shifting weight first. I got by for years, but the last year it's been painful. Hard to fly, hard to drive. At times, I've had to stop the car and get out for a few minutes just to move it.

Yesterday I went to the surgeon and got the results of my MRI. The ACL is ruptured, an old injury, and while there's no arthritis, the level of activity I've had has him concerned. Not to mention I've got "jumper's knee", basically tendonitis of the patellar tendon.

He can fix it. He recommends surgery to do an ACL repair, and at the same time he'd do some therapy on the patellar area. Either PRP or prolotherapy. I talked with my brother, and he agrees this would probably be better. Without this, I will likely hasten the deterioration of the knee, ache, have arthritis earlier, etc.

So I'm thinking to do it. The hard part now is finding a hole in my schedule where I can take 4 weeks off without flying. I'll have to skip a few events I was slated to attend. I'm glad I'm semi-committed already since I don't want to do this until ski-season is over, so I'm looking at April or May.

Surprisingly I wasn't too upset. I highly dislike the idea of surgery, but Tia went through this and while it was hard, she's come back fine. This also explains a lot and helps me to understand why things have been hurting. It also means that despite all the snowboarding, the black belt training, the running, the baseball, etc., it was the increased volleyball jumping and movement that has made it worse. The lack of the ACL is probably why the patella is irritated, so at least now I know.

It's good to know, and this should be much smoother than Tia's surgery. However, we'll see.