I so wish I had a lot of money to spare right now...
because then I'd seriously be thinking about a malpractice suit. Anyone remember I got a referral to a knee specialist from my usual surgeon? Well, today was the appointment and let's just say... that guy could tell me more about my knee after five minutes of prodding and twisting and five more minutes of looking at the MRI pictures (yes, a surgeon with a suitable computer program for looking at MRI pictures... OMG it really exists!) than all the other docs after months of treatment.
As it turns out, I do need surgery... and I should have gone through it months ago. The problem isn't the stability of my knee, it's the agility. Since I still can neither fully stretch nor fully bend it, even months after starting treatment, I desperately need surgery to correct that or there's a chance I'll never be able to fully move it again. And no, I don't want that to happen.
So, the actual problem seems to be that part of the cruciate ligament was torn off and managed to get stuck between two bones which is why this feels like the meniscus was ruptured even when you can't see anything wrong with the meniscus. The doc said that they hopefully won't need a full cruciate ligament reconstruction but just free the part that's stuck between the bones and then fuse it back to the rest of the cruciate. Recovery time after the surgery (in case they don't have to do the reconstruction) would be two to three days and then probably another three months of physical therapy. Which means I can kiss goodbye to any skiing holidays this season... but I'll hopefully be able to walk normally again which beats skiing.
That only leaves the whole anaesthetics question, then. I'm really, really scared about a general anaesthesia but an epidural sounds even more unpleasant and squicky and generally all things you don't want to hear when you're easy to scare about halth issues anyway. So... guess it's the big sleep, then. Blergh. But maybe that means that in November or so I'll finally see a real improvement and I'm sososo tired of putting my life on hold and by now I'd even take the slightest chance of doing something against the whole knee issue. Let's just hope I'll get an appointment for surgery still in September because, again... very, very, very tired of it all.
As it turns out, I do need surgery... and I should have gone through it months ago. The problem isn't the stability of my knee, it's the agility. Since I still can neither fully stretch nor fully bend it, even months after starting treatment, I desperately need surgery to correct that or there's a chance I'll never be able to fully move it again. And no, I don't want that to happen.
So, the actual problem seems to be that part of the cruciate ligament was torn off and managed to get stuck between two bones which is why this feels like the meniscus was ruptured even when you can't see anything wrong with the meniscus. The doc said that they hopefully won't need a full cruciate ligament reconstruction but just free the part that's stuck between the bones and then fuse it back to the rest of the cruciate. Recovery time after the surgery (in case they don't have to do the reconstruction) would be two to three days and then probably another three months of physical therapy. Which means I can kiss goodbye to any skiing holidays this season... but I'll hopefully be able to walk normally again which beats skiing.
That only leaves the whole anaesthetics question, then. I'm really, really scared about a general anaesthesia but an epidural sounds even more unpleasant and squicky and generally all things you don't want to hear when you're easy to scare about halth issues anyway. So... guess it's the big sleep, then. Blergh. But maybe that means that in November or so I'll finally see a real improvement and I'm sososo tired of putting my life on hold and by now I'd even take the slightest chance of doing something against the whole knee issue. Let's just hope I'll get an appointment for surgery still in September because, again... very, very, very tired of it all.