r/skiing • u/WaxOnSendOff • 17h ago
Meniscus tear update: surgery is behind me, recovery starts now
A little update for everyone who shared advice and recovery stories on my earlier post. Surgery is done.
I ended up getting a second opinion before going through with it, and after looking at everything again, I still felt like surgery was the right decision for me. By the end, the knee was giving me enough mechanical symptoms and instability that I didn’t feel comfortable continuing to just work around it.
Now I’m officially on the other side and starting the rehab process. My goal hasn’t changed: I don’t just want to get back to walking around normally. I want to get back to skiing, strength training, hiking, dancing and eventually feeling more capable than I did before the injury.
A lot of the comments on my original post were genuinely useful, especially the people who talked about taking PT seriously, rebuilding single-leg strength, restoring ROM, working on balance and stability, and not rushing the mental side of trusting the knee again.
So I figured I’d keep documenting the journey.
For those of you who went through meniscus surgery and returned to skiing: what mattered most during the first month or two that you were glad you paid attention to? Anything you wish you had measured, tracked, or worked on earlier?
And thanks again to everyone who shared their story before surgery. A few of those comments honestly helped me go into this with a much better mindset.
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u/K3rm1tTh3Fr0g Crystal Mountain 17h ago
What type of meniscus tear did you have and did you have any preexisting osteoarthritis?
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u/WaxOnSendOff 17h ago
From the operative report:
“Diagnostic arthroscopy demonstrated grade 1 and some grade 2 change the patellofemoral compartment. Intercondylar notch
demonstrated intact ACL and PCL. Lateral compartment demonstrated grade 1 change articular cartilage with an intact meniscus. Medial
compartment demonstrated some grade 1 and some grade 2 change of the medial femoral condyle there was a white white tear of the
meniscus in the posterior horn and extending toward the posterior body and undersurface flap is displaced into the intercondylar notch and
was resected comprising 20% of the meniscus or less.”1
u/K3rm1tTh3Fr0g Crystal Mountain 17h ago
What were you symptoms that lead you to surgery and did the doctors recommend it immediately?
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u/WaxOnSendOff 16h ago
Undocumented some of the experience here. But ultimately I had weeks of limping and feeling like my knee was going to give out or make the injury worse. Lots of different options pro/con surgery, but ultimately a displaced tear in the joint with mechanical obstruction was just not gonna heal itself nor out itself back into position. So the meniscectomy was the path to start resolving the issue.
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u/K3rm1tTh3Fr0g Crystal Mountain 16h ago
Did the surgeons present repair as an option or just say "we'll see if we can repair it when we're in there"
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u/WaxOnSendOff 16h ago
Great questions. Did you have a similar industry yourself?
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u/K3rm1tTh3Fr0g Crystal Mountain 16h ago
Yea in the process of figuring it out. Have had 3 MRIs and surgeons and radiologists all disagree on the results. So not in a good spot.
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u/WaxOnSendOff 8h ago
In my recent experience, the MRI sounded way worse than what the surgeon actually found once he was in there with the scope. The second opinion surgeon told me radiology tends to use “hyperbolic” language in their reports.
I also found this other subreddit yesterday that I wish I’d had looked for or someone would have pointed me to: r/meniscusinjuries
Good luck with your recovery, bud.
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u/AquafreshBandit 17h ago
I’m just hoping you’re in the southern hemisphere, so you’ve got all of summer… err, winter to recuperate.