My knees going bad... more surgery soon?

[mmglobal]

I'd never had any knee problems before my disability. I was ironic that after I returned from total disability to normal health... my R knee went bad. After years of disability, following my 3rd spine surgery (2-level ADR), at 3 months I was playing tennis... at 4 months I was SCUBA diving and rock climbing... at 5 months I was playing soccer.

BAM... at 6 months I was having knee surgery. An osteochondritic leision had torn loose. A small chunk of 'dead bone' came apart inside my knee, making it necessary to do a pretty standard arthroscopic cleanup surgery. Amazingly, after all my research on spine, I just went to my local surgeon and did what he felt was appropriate.

The surgeon told me that for this type of surgery, he has to grind away at necrotic bone, looking for healthy bone. He said that he just had to keep grinding and grinding and ultimately removed almost 1/2 of the medial condyle. After battling back and returning to sports, he said that will not be successful at volleyball, basketball, soccer or any other sport that was hard on the knees. (He said Tennis was OK, to which I replied, "If tennis is not hard on your knees, you are not playing it right!")

I was shocked that it didn't bother me to hang up my cleats... I felt that it should have been devistating, but I didn't care because MY BACK DIDN'T HURT! In any case, I recovered nicely from the knee surgery, but after a couple of years, my R (the operated knee) started to ache substantially. On one of my trips to the AlphaKlnik, Dr. Toft did an MRI. I was shocked when he said that based on the xrays, my L knee was in worse shape. (There was no MRI of the left.)

My symptoms were not bad enough to do anything yet, so a couple more years passed with just a slight increase in ache and advancing to both sides. A year ago, I had severe pain in my L knee and an MRI shows a miniscus tear. Everyone said that they don't get better on their own, but I didn't listen.. for the last year I've tolerated very temporary bouts of severe pain 3-4 times a week.

Things have gotten much worse and I'm ready to go. If I'm going to simply repair the tear, I'll probably do it locally, but I'll be sending a new MRI to Dr. Toft. If he feels that I'm a good candidate for chondroplasty, I'll do it. I don't know how likely this is. I think a better candidate is earlier in the degenerative process and ther cartilage in both knees is pretty much gone. But I trust Dr. Toft and will most likely do what he recommends.

I wonder if I can observe my own surgery?

Wish me luck... all the best,

Mark