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<\/p>\nRecently I made the mistake? of telling my readers that I had injured my knee and that an MRI, combined with an orthopedic consult, suggested that surgery would likely be in the cards to repair it. Yesterday, an appointment with an orthopedic surgeon finally provided a definitive diagnosis and a suggested course of action. It was a long wait until after the Thanksgiving holiday week.<\/p>\n
Since I’d mentioned the injury in the first place, I figured I needed to report the outcome to my readers. Besides, my blog is my way of keeping family and close friends up to date.<\/p>\n
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Human Knee – Image in Creative Commons<\/em><\/p>\n The MRI revealed that I had strained (rather than torn, whew!) my medial collateral ligament (MCL) but my initial orthopedist told me it would likely heal on its own within two weeks. Yesterday was 15 days after the injury occurred and thankfully it has<\/em> mostly healed. My surgeon concluded that it was no longer of much concern, if any.<\/p>\n But the MRI had also revealed that I had a “complex tear of the peripheral body and posterior horn medial meniscus” and that’s what I was most worried about. My initial orthopedist said that any injury to the meniscus that was more serious than “minor” would likely require surgery and a “complex tear” didn’t sound minor to me. The very last thing I needed was having to be on crutches and unable to drive (the injury is to my right knee) for weeks on end while I’m still struggling to recover from major back surgery – a 4-level lumbar fusion.<\/p>\n So yesterday morning I was immensely relieved when my surgeon told me that it was unlikely that my meniscus would need surgical repair. It turns out that most or all of the pain I had after the injury was caused by the MCL strain rather than the torn meniscus. At this point I have little pain or even discomfort anywhere in my knee and my surgeon said “why have surgery to prevent pain you don’t have?”. He also said that it’s “very possible” that the meniscus tear is an old injury.<\/p>\n A bullet that I was very happy to dodge.<\/p>\n Ron<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Yesterday, an appointment with an orthopedic surgeon provided a definitive diagnosis and a suggested course of action for my recent knee injury.<\/p>\n