A Rock in my Shoe

Before I continue I want to thank everyone who left a comment on the blog, twitter or by email/sms regarding my knee injury. Thank you for all the encouragement.

Well finally after almost waiting two weeks to see the doctor I was there on Friday afternoon. One advantage of having one Doctor dealing with all my sport injuries is there is no "Playing Twenty Questions with me" and she knows my history and what sport I do and at what intensity.

She confirmed what my coach thought it is, a torn meniscus with a small piece separated from the meniscus.

I explained to her that my knee's been sore for two weeks and my running is uncomfortable and sore but funny enough on Friday I had no pain when I went out for a run.

The danger of having a piece "floating" around is, one moment it can be in a spot which won't bother you but the next moment it can move to a part of the knee that can make running impossible.

After a long discussion and explaining to her my race schedule and goals for the new season, we came to an agreement to remove the loose piece as soon as possible. If I wasn't a Triathlete with running making up a big part of the sport I may have come away without an operation.

If you are not that active and doing a sport you can live with the little discomfort but the three main reasons why I am having the piece removed is number one I can't train at 100% intensity.

My running sessions are average and I can't do any speed work.

The second reason is the loose piece can move into an area that may make running impossible. With my luck this will happen during my pre-race run the day before Ironman or even during Ironman.

Finally the longer I wait the more damage the loose piece is causing, moving around in my knee and grinding and rubbing against other internal knee parts.

And as Doc says, "If you have a little rock in your shoe you stop take it out and walk on"

One thing I can say is my Doctor is very thorough. She did a sonar scan and x-rays (they even give you a CD these days).

[I haven't had X-rays taken in a very long time but it's quite cool these days with the CD. I played around with it and the CD program allows you to measure and highlight different parts on the x-rays. I just had a little panic attack when I couldn't find the function to delete all the measurements and drawings I made on the x-rays.

Was already thinking of what the specialist will think of all these drawings on the x-rays. Luckily I managed to erase it all].

She then phoned the specialist who did my previous knee operation and managed to squeeze me in to see him on Monday and arranged to provisionally put me on the theater list for Tuesday.

If the specialist agree with her findings I am going for the operation on Tuesday.

Must say if she wasn't assisting the specialist during his operations and work so close with him I would have had no choice but to wait until next year to have the operation as Tuesday is the last day of 2010 that he is doing operations.

That would have frustrated the, you know what out, of me and might have given my 2011 season a major drawback.

Recovery time depends as every patient reacts differently but being healthy and fit and with the piece being loose inside the knee and no need to work the meniscus to remove it, she reckons three weeks.

As I said she can't be 100% sure but she think I will be able to run again in three weeks and will be able to swim and bike before that. Now it is just another wait until Monday for the final decision from the specialist.

Forgot to post this picture with the previous post of DJ playing with Aiden, quite a nice pic. Oh and tomorrow is Kim's birthday. Me and DJ spend most of the day shopping for presents, having something to eat and some father, daughter time.

Happy birthday Kim, love U