Alabama Bound for Surgery #2

I met with my surgeon and friend, Dr Hasty, today to go over the results from Wednesday’s MRI and, just as I thought, there’s a reason the knee isn’t feeling so swift.  It’s been 26 weeks since I had microfracture surgery to repair a patch of worn cartilage on my femur.  And the surgery apparently was a complete bust.  For the record, Blue Cross Blue Shield allows microfracture as the only preliminary surgical option for a case like mine, so it had to be done unless I was going to pay for another surgery out of pocket.  Hasty and I didn't have much of a choice.  It doesn't have a very great success rate, so why they stick it to us can only be because they think it saves them money somehow.  What a crock that is.  Thanks, Blue Cross, and now I know the reason why there’s BS in BCBS.  Whatever, though.  I'm over it.  At this point at least it appears as if there are more options that my insurance will so graciously allow us to move on with and actually try to solve the problem. 

It's the one on the left, which looks just as fine as the one on the right, but evidently there's something sinister going on that we can't see from here.

So here’s the verdict.  Not only did the surgery to drill holes in the bones - and magically grow cartilage out of them where there is none - not work, but now my knee is in worse shape than it was before I even had the surgery.  Still no new cartilage down there where the two bones are rubbing together.  This explains why walking, standing, or anything that involves load bearing is painful.  There is also some concern I have osteonecrosis – partial dying of the bone. 

Here’s the plan.  Dr Hasty referred me to a colleage of his named Dr Jeff Dugas, who is evidently involved in surgeries for the NFL.  Dr Dugas at Alabama Sports Medicine will most likely do a procedure called High Tibial Osteotomy, in which a wedge is cut out of the tibia to realign my lower leg and redistribute the load more evenly across my knee joint.  I guess it will make me less bow legged too, so I’ll be better at hemming a hog in a ditch.  Then for the worn cartilage he’ll do a procedure which involves grafting living cartilage from a frozen cadaver, which means they have really big refrigerators, or some newer procedure I don’t know near enough about to talk about here.  We also talked about subchondroplasty but that sounds like a procedure for a different issue.  I’m trying to learn about this stuff as I go.  Dr Dugas apparently is fairly confident that I’ll be able to run again after all of this, which is great to hear but I know it’s a long way away.

The surgery will take place in Birmingham, Alabama the week of May 5.  Alabama!  Who knew?!  Is it just me or, when you think of Alabama, is that not the last place you would go, "Whooaaa, isn't that where all the best surgeons hang out?!"   Then I’ll come back home to begin my recovery and another 6 weeks of non-weight bearing crutchery.  Not looking forward at all to going through all of that again.  It’s a good thing I have a wife that’s hyper-nurturing.

And I threw away that infernal handicapped toilet contraption from the last surgery recovery, dammit.......

Anyway, when I know more I’ll update.  Thanks to all for the kind words of encouragement.  2014 is going to be a tough year, but I can hack it.