Meeting with surgeon

Posted by jim on Friday, December 12, 2008. Visit jim's BodyDaemon Journal.

I had my meeting with the surgeon today.

He was great - very understanding and spoke to me at length about my options for both the right knee and shoulder.

I will do a 'part 2' article explaining these in depth, but the upshot is:

Right Knee
He thinks it's simply a case of patella maltracking. My options are basically:

• Attempt to rectify through physiotherapy;
• Have a lateral release.

I'm not keen on the lateral release idea yet, so the plan is to attack physiotherapy with every ounce of energy I have for the next 6 months, and if there's no improvement, go for the surgery.

Right Shoulder
He says the pain I'm getting does not fit the profile of arthiritis and seems to be due to a mechanical fault. He's spotted 2 things on the MRI scan that may be be causing me problems:

• What appears to be a cartilidge 'ulcer', which may require Microfracture;
  (noted as a Cystic Lesion in previous findings)
  
  
• It looks like some of the labrum has partially detatched from the glenoid.

Both of the above can be rectified surgically which is great news. However the MRI scan that led to the above findings is apparently not of the best quality, so he wants to re-do the scan. So the plan is:

1. Have the scan re-done;
2. Review the findings;
3. Make an informed decision to proceed with surgery.

Unless the refined scan paints a drastically different picture it looks like more surgery is inevitable.

Having said that, up until today I had been told my shoulder was 'as good as it's going to be' - so this is a dramatic improvement. Marcus Green has fixed my left knee before, and I have every faith he will do as much as is possible to improve things in my shoulder.

So - now I wait for the scan. I'll try to get it before Christmas.

In the meantime:

• No upper body exercise at all as it may make the damage worse;
• Lots of leg rehab workouts, doing whatever I can that doesn't hurt;
• Continue dieting to lose some of the excess weight;
• Try to remain positive.