Case Summary  |  Meniscus Injury

A while back, while building a second story deck for a contractor I was working for at the time, I stood after having been working on my knees for two or three hours and felt terrible pain in my right knee. I could not bend or straighten it much and it began to swell quickly. Having been an athlete in college and before and being an avid snowboarder at the time, I was no stranger to pain and, typically, I chose to suck it up and hop around the rest of the day. As we left the job site we stopped by a gas station and got a bag of ice which I applied for the 90 minute duration of our trip back to our shop. By the time we got back my knee was swollen to the size of a cantaloupe and had stiffened to the point where I could hardly move it at all. I went home, got more ice, took a handful of OTC pain relievers/anti-inflammatory medication and drank a lot of beer. This seemed to help my symptoms until the morning.

The next day I skipped work and went to a sports medicine specialist at the Fanny Allen Health Care Center at the University of Vermont. I was fortunate to get an appointment with a very thorough and knowledgeable doctor who took very little time diagnosing a tear in the medial meniscus of the right knee. He sent me for x-rays to confirm what his sadistic exam led him to believe and sent me home with a prescription for some pain killers and an appointment for arthroscopic surgery a few days later.

I returned for the surgical appointment, was given a shot in the back that paralyzed me from the waist down and a couple of pills that made it all seem like great fun. In the OR I was awake and able to watch the procedure on an overhead monitor as the doctors used what looked like a tiny drain snake to remove the shredded cartilage. I was sent home with a Kryo-cuff, a prescription for Dilaudid, and pneumonia.

After just two days, I was surprised to be walking around with ease and with very little pain and within a week I was attending PT and returned to work. Today I still get swelling and pain when I put too much stress on that knee, but it's hardly debilitating and can be treated with Aleve and ice and can be avoided if I remember to wear my knee brace before engaging in activities that cause inflammation.