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I’m delighted to welcome an old friend to the site today. Rob is a runner and cyclist from Winchester, one of my favourite old stomping grounds. He’s very kindly agreed to share his story about his experience recovering from meniscal surgery..
It sounded like a good idea at the time, in the way so many other stories of misadventure begin. I was asked to join some mates in running a local 10k for charity and, as a non-runner but reasonably fit mountain biker, I thought it might be fun. Plus the winter was coming and I fancied running as a convenient way to keep my fitness up without the endless laundry, bike washing and maintenance associated with each bike ride. So with three months to go, encouraged by fond memories of a half-marathon I ran when I was still young, I set about pounding the wet streets of Winchester every few days. I set myself a target time of 53 minutes – not exactly quick but not embarrassing either – and felt pretty confident on the big day that I’d smash it, or at least have a lot of fun trying.
It was on a surprisingly chilly day in late February 2013 that I found myself with hundreds of others, in similarly silly-looking lycra, queueing in frustration to pass the start-line bottleneck. Soon enough I was trotting along, passing quite a few of the people in my time group and, unexpectedly, some of those in the group in front. Maybe I was quite quick after all? Then a bit of a twinge from my left knee reminded me that I was 36, not 26, and I should probably take it a bit easier. By about the 3km mark, the twinge had become a steady pain and grew steadily worse over the next couple of k’s until by about half-way it was pretty sore and I was almost jogging, with a noticeable limp, being passed easily by the very people I’d been so pleased to overtake earlier and many others from way behind. Adrenalin and sheer bloody-mindedness got me to the finish line, at which point my knee stiffened completely and it was almost impossible to walk without a lot of pain. Oops. That’s not good, I thought.
Over the next few months, I saw a consultant orthopaedic surgeon, had X-rays and an MRI scan, and a battery of physiotherapy exercises to try to work out what I’d done and begin to build up some strength again. I was able to walk again after just a few weeks, and by the end of the course of physio, I could do pretty much anything without any pain – except running. Even a few minutes of moderate jogging on a treadmill was enough to bring back the twinge as a warning not to continue. With nothing obvious visible on the scans, my consultant couldn’t really suggest anything other than an arthroscopy: send in a camera, via keyhole surgery, to have a look around and try and fix whatever’s lurking in there. It would be a relatively low-risk operation performed under general anaesthetic that takes maybe twenty minutes, resulting in not being able to drive for a couple of days and staying off the bike for a bit, but walking the same day. With my pregnant wife due to have our first baby at any time in the next few weeks, being off my feet for any length of time would have been pretty inconvenient (not to mention very unpopular!) so we agreed to leave it whilst it wasn’t causing me any problems.
A year on, and regular mountain bike rides with a local club was doing wonders for my fitness. I’d had no real problems from my knee during rides, but it was sometimes sore afterwards. Going camping, doing DIY or anything requiring kneeling or squatting left me a bit broken for a day or two. At 38, am I really that old? Should I put up with this? With the confident words of my consultant still in my mind, I thought now might be a better time to get it sorted: our baby girl is old enough not to need so much looking after and with winter coming I’m not so fussed about missing a few weeks biking. I made the appointment…
Coming round from the anaesthetic, I was a little surprised to be told the operation had been a couple of hours. Despite there not being much to see on the X-ray or MRI images, he’d managed to find a centimetre-long tear in my medial meniscus – a sliver of cartilage which absorbs shocks and provides a low-friction surface between the femur and tibia. There are apparently two main options when treating a tear: cut out the torn part (a partial meniscectomy), or repair it. The consultant had opted for the latter and, because of the minimal blood supply to the area, the repair would heal very slowly, if ever, and would be very fragile at first. So instead of walking out of the hospital, I left on crutches and wearing a brace, having been told not to bear any weight on that leg for the next six weeks!
Signed off from work, spending most of each day stuck on the sofa with only the Internet for company, the Wikipedia page on meniscal tears is a depressing read: the headlines “most common knee injury” and “four to six months rehabilitation” stand out in particular. But the alternative, removing the torn meniscus, would have left me with an increased risk of osteoarthritis later on so I’m happy to put up with a longer recovery. After two weeks I excitedly re-set the knee brace to sixty degrees (from just thirty) which seemed like a tremendous relief. The post-op pain and swelling had mostly gone, I arranged to work from home to give me something to do and, apart from not being able to walk, drive, or even carry things (kinda difficult with a crutch in each hand!), life was returning to a degree of normality. The only downside was the sight of my rapidly-vanishing quads due to lack of normal use – a whole 4cm difference in thigh circumference, after only a fortnight, in spite of the static quads and leg raise exercises. Would I make it to six weeks without withering away to nothing?!
At four weeks post-op, I was mostly feeling normal again and was allowed to bear some weight (e.g. standing) and to go through the motions of walking, but with the crutches taking most of the weight. This was a great help because at six weeks, with the long-anticipated chucking of the crutches and brace, I found I could walk reasonably well within a couple of days. About a week later I was driving again and back to working from the office – not something I’d thought I’d ever be pleased about, but hey! The regular physio continued and recovery became much more satisfyingly rapid, but with the swelling in the joint still preventing me from turning the pedals on my turbo-trainer. Having been convinced by the surgeon that this was nothing to worry about (apparently just the implanted devices irritating the neighbouring tissue) my physiotherapist set about bending me until I squeaked! That night I managed the first full turns of the cranks, to my great relief and excitement.
At the time of writing this it’s been 11 weeks, I’m walking normally and I’m very pleased to have been out on the mountain bike again a couple of times, with no real ill-effects to report except not being back to my former strength yet; my skinny leg still looks very odd compared to the normal one, but now that I’m riding again I can’t imagine it will be long before it catches up. In hindsight, I think I got off quite lightly: I’ve discovered at least eight of my friends and work colleagues have suffered meniscal tears, some in both knees, and some having had multiple operations! Causes have ranged from playing American Football to crossing the road, so perhaps I should stop blaming running for my own injury. Much as I’d like to run again, I don’t think I want to risk anything more serious than a quick jog on a treadmill in case I have to go through it all again… although I do have a 10k time to beat!
