My Knee - The Early Days, Part I

I created this blog a while back, with the intention of writing about my recovery from a major knee surgery I had on 4/27/08. I'm actually now nearly 14 months into my recovery, and I've finally decided to start writing about my experience.

I am doing so because the surgery I had - autologous chondrocyte implantation - is a relatively new procedure that isn't done all that often, so I hope reading about my experience might be helpful to people who are considering having the procedure. I feels I was well-informed about what I was getting into, but it's still been a long and pretty difficult road.

So, I'll start with a little background about how I came to be in the operating room on that Friday in April.

I started running seriously when I was a sophomore in high school. I turned to running by default, really, since I wasn't good at other sports. I wasn't all that good at running initially, either, but by my senior year I was a better-than-average high school runner. I ran through college (varsity at at Division III school), and ran my first marathon my senior year (I ran 2:47, which I thought was OK-but-not-great at tthe time, but now I think was pretty good). Anyway, I continued to run regularly, usually doing one or two marathons a year. I was quite injury-free through the years, although I never ran truly high mileage.

Right around my 40th birthday, I had some moderately severe left knee pain with swelling, and had trouble running. I saw an orthopedic doctor, who thought it was ileotibeal band syndrome, and sent me to a physical therapist. I improved with PT and staying away from running for a few months, and was able to resume running pretty much as before. I continued to have mild knee pain, but it wasn't too bad, and so I didn't pay much attention to it.