20 1/2 Week Update -- OS Visit

Actually, it’s been 143 days since my surgery. The ability to easily calculate the amount of time that’s elapsed is the biggest advantage of having surgery on New Year’s Eve, I guess.

I met with Dr. Turgeon Friday morning. My biggest question/concern was the crunching noises whenever I perform open chain exercises. The knee doesn’t hurt, thankfully, and I wanted to know whether I should continue performing these exercises despite the noises.

Dr. T said nope. He wants me to avoid open chain exercises for the next month. The graft is still healing, and he doesn’t want to risk damaging it. He didn’t seem overly concerned about the noises. He manipulated my knee a few times and noted the noises only happened at the initial contraction point when the patella and trochlear groove first bear weight. Actually, the knee really didn’t crunch during my visit today. Gotta hate it when the problem doesn’t occur the one time you want it to; that’s the Murphy’s Law of ACI surgery in action. On the plus side, the knee now barely clicks during full extension, and doesn’t click at all if I extend the leg at a glacial pace, an improvement over my last visit. Overall, this isn’t necessarily a positive sign, but it’s terrible, either.

I scheduled an MRI on June 29, with the follow-up visit on July 1. I’ll get an early Fourth of July present. Or lump of coal. I’m not sure what to expect from an MRI at the 6-month mark. It’s more like a mid-quarter progress report. The MRI really will reveal only bad information, like an incomplete graft, fissures or adhesions on the graft site, or excess scar tissue. Hopefully the MRI will indicate that the lesions are filled in, but it’s still too early to determine whether the cloned cartilage has adequately bonded with the existing stuff. That probably won’t happen until the 10-14 month mark, I believe, though sometimes you can tell at 8 months. And sometimes you really can’t tell unless the doctor actually scopes the knee. We’ll see. As much as I’m looking forward to seeing the inside of my bionicly repaired knee, that’s actually kinda perverse. If you think about it, the best case scenario is I learn things are on track, not that I’m healed. That’s the same kind of news I’ve heard for the past 20 ½ weeks. Basically, the MRI might not tell me anything new. Except now there’s a chance I might discover that something inside my knee is seriously jacked up. Not good times.