The procedure is actually two surgeries in one. First, they will be taking a cadaver medial meniscus and attaching it to the rim of my existing meniscus. Two years ago I had a partial meniscectomy after tearing it while jumping from one snow covered bench to another in Chicago... this deficit has left my knee unstable and unable to absorb forces which has caused damage to the articular cartilage (lines most joints in our body-the purple-ish colored structure in the picture at the bottom).
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| Medial Meniscus transplant (picture A) |
Which leads me to the next part... They will be replacing much of the damaged articular cartilage with cells they harvested last March. These cells have been grown in a lab and are ready to be implanted on my femoral condyles and inferior surface of my patella. This procedure is called Autologous Chondrocyte Implantation (ACI) if you want to google it.
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| ACI procedure |
In layman's terms... the supporting structures of my knee have been damaged to a point where when I walk or workout, it is essentially bone rubbing on bone. Its extremely painful and has limited what I have been able to do for the past couple of years.
I attached a couple of pictures of the procedures. I will be on crutches (non-weight bearing) for at least 4 weeks. My total time on crutches should be about 8 weeks. This is going to be the hardest part of recovery. It has to be very slow to allow the articular cartilage cells to solidify and allow the new meniscus to heal and become one with the rim of my old meniscus.
I will keep you all updated on how the surgery goes as well as how recovery goes post-opp. If you think about it- say a little prayer on Tuesday morning. Thanks!
1 comment:
Good luck! I'll be thinking of you - especially during that awful rehab process!
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