Recovering From Microfracture Surgery

Easy run. Also did Army Physical Fitness Test and scored a 345 on extended scale, 300 is max and you can score more for going beyond maximum scores in each event. I did 83 push-ups in two minutes, no resting allowed, then 90 sit-ups in two minutes. My goal is to be able to do 100 push-ups and 100 sit-ups so I am getting there. I know I am getting stronger as my max bench press is at about 200lbs which is 140% of my body weight.

Hilly run with cadets plus a bunch of push-ups and sit-ups.

Easy run with cadets plus 250 push-ups and sit-ups.

Ok, I have been back in town since 3 July trying to catch up at work. I have been running everyday and the knee pain has been minimal but still present. So, although I have been trying to talk myself out of knee surgery I am going through with it today. I head in this afternoon and go under at around 5:00pm. I can't eat or drink anything all day so I will be starving. Maybe this is to distract me from the thought of the surgery. I am hoping that the Dr. finds the issue and is able to fix it. I guess I will know soon enough.

So today I did a track workout as my last run. I bet their is not many people who can say they did a track workout the morning of their knee surgery. The knee was ok overall for the workout. Still some nagging but very minimal. Again, hopefully just my mind playing tricks on me trying to pretend nothing is wrong. So I did 8x400 repeats with a 400 jog between. 400s were all between 1:15 - 1:16 except the last one was in 1:12. Not bad considering the shape I am in. The 1:12 felt a lot tougher than it should have.

Hopefully, all goes well today and I am able to bounce back quickly. Supposedly if all goes well I can be back running again in 7 to 10 days. I would love to be back at it next week. I will try and post some information after the surgery as soon as I feel up to it.

Below and on the following days blogs I will be blogging about my recovery from microfracture surgery. As a runner I did not find much in the way of others stories of recovery so if you happen to stumble across this feel free to follow my progress. If you happen to have microfracture surgery and have any questions feel free to ask or share your experiences as well.

Well the surgery is complete and it is not good news. I did not have torn meniscus. In fact a torn meniscus would have been great news compared to what was found. Just about anything would have been better. I had cartilage damage where a section of cartilage about 1cm was damaged all the way to the bone. In this case the only chance at healing and recovery was a procedure called microfracture surgery. If I had continued to run with this the cartilage damaged would have continued to get worse until I would have needed a knee replacement surgery at some point. This procedure has the rough areas of cartilage cleaned up around the damaged area and then the bone has several holes (microfractures) made in it so that bone marrow (stem cells) and blood seep out of the bone and in the process allow for new cartilage to form in the cartilage hole. However, this takes a long time and while this process is going on the leg cannot be allowed to bear weight. So the Doctor says I have to be on crutches for 4-6 weeks and put no weight on the leg at all during this time period. The best case scenario for a full recovery is 4-6 months minimum before running or doing any impact type activities. The most likely cause was my car accident as this is normally a trauma associated injury. I am on percoset which is a major pain killer. So right now I am pretty down. At this point I have a long road to recovery ahead and even then it is no guarantee that I can return to the marathon again. My doctor feels my chances for a full recovery are good but it will not be easy. I will start some physical training next week to work on keeping some range of motion in the knee without any weight bearing or resistance. The doctor has called for 4-6 hours a day of spinning on a bike with no resistance whatsoever. I am not sure how I will manage to get that many hours in but I am going to go look for a good spin bike tomorrow as the only way I will get in anywhere near enough hours is if I have a spin bike in my house and I spend every spare minute on it. Well, all I can ask is for everyone to keep me in your prayers as things are not so hot right now. For now I am sidelined with the hope that it is not permanent.