Partial medial meniscectomy

Pre-op. Reassuring arrow

Had my much (not) anticipated knee surgery last Friday, today is Day 4 post surgery and I thought it was time for an update.


I had my surgery done at BMI Priory Hospital in Edgbaston, under Marcus Green. Mr Green has been my Orthopaedic Surgeon on four occasions now and I trust him completely with my knees and getting be fit and back to running. I had experienced a teat in my left knee almost 10 years ago and he successfully got me back running. That knee is absolutely fantastic and has been very strong since. With my right knee, it is common that if you have had a tear in one knee, you are at a higher risk for having a tear in the other knee. The likelihood is that I just have cartilage that is prone to this type of injury and given a childhood of playing ice hockey and football into my 30s, probably didn't help with their condition before getting into running. That being said, my current tear seemed to develop some time in the past couple of years, and I put this down to having a 4 year old son, and during those initial few years I probably twisted my knee whilst picking him up or carrying him. The tear was minor and I've been managing it with limiting my runs and treating the pain. However, it got to the point where it was too much and was hindering my running and daily life so decided to have the operation. That was last November. That surgery went well, but during my rehab, I twisted (while cooking dinner) and immediately felt pain in my knee and knew that I had torn it again.

1 hr post-op

So Friday, was the second surgery on the same knee to hopefully put right what should have been done in the first operation. This type of surgery is difficult in the sense that it is hard for the surgeon to know exactly how much of the cartilage to resect. Obviously, the cartilage has a functional purpose so they do not want to be whipping out too much unnecessarily, so they try to be conservative. The first surgery, Mr Green admitted he was probably too conservative and there was probably still some weak cartilage left which tore under minimal strain.

For this second surgery, he said that he removed the torn segments and resected back to a good healthy margin with a stable edge, which hopefully should mean a better recovery and hopefully a similar path as my other knee.

24 hrs post-op

So far, all is well. I was first on the surgical list (around 9 am) and was out of theatre, up and weightbearing by midday. I walked out of the hospital at 2pm! Over the past couple of days it has mainly been about rest, icing it and keeping it elevated to reduce the swelling. This first week in terms of rehab is focussed on mobility increasing the range of motion. This has been o.k, but I've not yet got that much mobility, probably around 60% of the normal range. If you imagine sitting on the floor with your knee bent and your heel touching your bum being 100%, I've got a fair bit to improve. It is early days yet and the main restrictions are the swelling and the stitches on the two portals the surgery was done through. One of the portals is taking a little longer to heal over, and so every time I flex my knee it marginally opens up again, which limits the exercises I can do right now. Pain wise, all is good and I've been off my painkillers for a couple of days now.

4 days post-op

I have physio scheduled for next week and that's when the rehab fully starts again!
Until then...keep running!