Another opinion

I saw Dr. Michael Medvecky at Yale today, because my ailing right knee seems to have stopped responding to prolotherapy. As previously reported, there had been some improvement, but I feel that it has leveled off, unfortunately. I was hoping to avoid surgery on the knee, but that seems unlikely now. The first two docs that I saw (orthopedists) told me that I have hamstring tendonitis. The third doc that I saw (osteopathist) told me that I have some stretching of my MCL and the medial coronary ligaments of the knee. The fourth doc, Medvecky, told me that I have a partial hamstring tendon avulsion--if I understood him correctly--which is the tearing away of the tendon from the bone. I'm scheduled to have a contrast MRI (big bucks) on Tuesday, Nov. 22nd, and I will follow-up with Medvecky on Monday, Nov. 28th. He said that if it is, in fact, an avulsion, he would need to surgically reattach the tendon to the bone and debride any scar tissue that has formed at the site of the injury. Fine. Do what you you gotta do.

Then, of course, there was the bit about how we can try to get you back to where you were, but there are no guarantees. I don't need a surgeon to not guarantee me anything, I just need him to repair the injury, and my body will do the rest. If there's a will, there's a way. I learned that with my foot. Before learning of the injury to my foot, I was told by a podiatrist that I would have to limit my running to 8 miles per week if I wanted to do any running at all, and then I went on to average upwards of 55 miles per week and run four marathons without even the slightest protest from my foot.

In the meantime, I'll be mostly biking with some occasional running thrown in there. Just because I'm not in excruciating pain doesn't mean there's not a serious problem. Literally, the day before my foot surgery, I ran 7 miles with very little discomfort. Eventually, things quiet down, and one begins to question whether there is, in fact, a serious problem, but once one begins to ramp up, the problem rears its ugly face once again. And that's what's happened with the knee.