My knee surgery sob story:
Summer before freshman year in high school, I'm playing a very not-acceptable-in-2019-named footballish game at a friend's birthday party, feel a big pop in my left knee, definitely weird things going on in there. There's an amazing orthopedic surgeon locally, guy who has worked with professional athletes and whatnot, and so I get on the wait list for this guy. The surgery was going to happen right after my freshman football season, so I just played on it. About once per game, I'd twist it weird, the bottom half of my leg would pop out of position relative to the upper half, and a bulge of cartilage would stick out of the side of my knee. I'd have to limp off the field, sit down, push the cartilage back into the joint with my fingers, work the knee back and forth a few times, then I'd be back into the game.
Doc did a scope after the season, ended up cutting a large amount of the meniscus out. Woke up with an ace bandage around my knee and spent the night at a friend's house straight from the hospital. Three weeks later, I was jogging and doing light lifts.
One year later, as a sophomore, I've worked my way to a starting position by the end of the first week of practice. Bend down to pick up a knee pad after my last two-a-day, and feel/hear that familiar pop, only this time in my other knee. Don't want to miss a season, so I scheduled the soonest surgery I could get with what turned out to be the shittiest surgeon in the area. What I expected to be another simple scope turned out to be anything but. Woke up to this massive cast-like thing from groin to foot that had an ice water bladder inside, wrapped around the knee, fed by a small Igloo cooler. I wasn't able to get off the couch for two weeks, pain was excruciating, was in an immobilizer brace for a month after that. Fucking doctor decided--while I was out cold on the table--that my massive meniscus tear looked like a perfect candidate for a new technique he had just learned at a conference. Instead of cutting the torn piece out, you suture it through the scope and try to get it to heal. FS idea, as cartilage and ligaments are notorious for healing impossibly slowly due to lack of blood flow. Tore it even worse almost immediately after getting the brace off.
Didn't want to miss yet another season, so made the dumbass mistake of going back to the same FS surgeon because, of course, his schedule's wide open. This time, this motherfucker makes the executive decision while I was on the table to shoot a scope through my patella because he suspected that there was something more going on behind it. There wasn't. It was a wasted fifth hole that more than doubled the recovery time. And led to a nearly immediate new tear during the first game of my junior season. Said, "Fuck it" this time, scheduled another procedure with the good surgeon for after the season, played on the tear the rest of the year, and then had it done right.
I never had a problem with my left knee after the surgeon who knew his ass from a hole in the ground simply cut out the tear. And my right knee? This same guy was so damned good that this time I wasn't even knocked out. Local anesthetic, quick snip snip, directly off the operating table and onto a treadmill to prevent scar tissue and swelling. I was full sprint less than a month later.
Long story short, the surgeon makes all the difference, this shit never heals right on its own, and Ballz is spot on with this one.
