Quite possibly the only good thing to come out of today is that I am marked urgent for knee surgery and will hopefully get in within 1-2 months. Everything else was kind of depressing.
My knee is essentially a mess and that mess is a result of being misdiagnosed since 2011, which is the likely time I did tear my ACL. Since I've been working with an unstable knee since then, I've been progressively damaging it more and more, until we got to now. As she described it, I effectively have the knee of a 62-year old, not a 32-year old.
Given that I have been misdiagnosed by no less than three physios and one sports med doctor at three different clinics, you can imagine I'm not terribly impressed. Miles is literally the only one throughout this entire time that has raised ACL as a possibility.
The first doctor I saw today figures that the flap of my meniscus that is displaced (and preventing me from getting full extension) may actually be stabilizing my knee. So essentially I'm that episode of The Simpsons where Mr. Burns has every illness known to mankind and they are all jammed in that door frame. I was pretty frustrated after he told me he highly doubted I tore my ACL in November, but likely earlier, and I expressed my concerns with respect to getting surgery and being able to recover in time to try to make team Canada. Based on my history of misdiagnosis, my sporting needs, and the fact that my knee is locked, he told me he would try to accelerate my timeline. He actually managed to get me a surgical consult today, so that was I guess a second good thing.
The surgeon I wound up seeing was the one that my physio had recommended, and she was pretty solid. The concerns with my knee are (i) repairing what can be repaired; and (ii) trying to minimize the further progression of osteoarthritis in the joint. The bad thing is that I have some bone spurs and degradation on the lateral side, I have my meniscal tears on the medial side (given my two tears, my medial meniscus is likely to be fully removed) and then I have some anterior degradation because of my lack of ACL. Hence tricompartmental arthritis. She was telling me that long term to minimize its progression I may want to consider giving up high impact sports and heavy lifting...you know, everything I love.
So next step for me is to go get a physical signed off on, as apparently that's a requirement for surgery. And then hopefully I get a call within the next week with a date.
And then 12 months of recovery.
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