Knee

Hello all! Yes I know it has been a lllooonnnggg while since I have posted anything. I can give you excuse after excuse but I think really it was just out of pure laziness and I've been getting a lot of flack from my peeps, so here you go!!!

I thought I'd share a little of what has been going on in my life. Last Monday, January 21st I had surgery on my left knee and I thought I'd share these photos I got yesterday from the doc. No there is no blood or gore but it's pretty interesting.

The 2nd picture down on the right is of gnarly tissue (looks like sea kelp) that they call rice cells. It is precursor to rheumatoid arthritis. There is not much they can do about those but they did take a chunk and sent it to pathology to test for cancerous tumors and other diseases. Good news-all tests came back clean! May develop into worse arthritis later.

3rd picture on right and 4th picture on left are of the damage he hopefully fixed. The light pink is of exposed bone that rub on each other. The white part is of cartilage. My cartilage is chunking away. Dr. Matheny said this was not normal because usually it wears down and doesn't chunk off. These light pink areas is where he drilled into the bone and did a procedure called micro -fracture. It tricks the body into thinking you have a break and sends bone marrow there to fill the space. It clots there and after about a year, turns into a faux cartilage. Bad news- this usually only lasts for a couple of years. The sucky part is it is non-weight bearing for 6-8 weeks. I'm only a week and 1/2 there!!!



On this second set of pictures (1st picture) this is of my ligament on the lateral (inner part) of my knee. Normally this looks like a piece of smooth tape but mine is shredded like spaghetti. No repair can be done because of the manner in which it is damaged (nothing to sew itself to) Can still move and knee is not "loose" so it still functions. The bottom 2 pictures are of normal cartilage which is on the medial side of my knee.

Besides the micro-fracture he did a repair on my meniscus, removed a cyst, and sucked out bone and cartilage fragments that were floating around in the synovial fluid. Conclusion-well despite all of this, I will have to have a total knee replacement. My "young" age is a big factor though. He is hoping this procedure will buy me a few years!