Went to the Dr. yesterday. Swollen knee (Swollen/tight dull ache) for the last week. Showed up the day after refereeing a football game. (1 of many) X-Ray showed nothing. MRI in the morning. Doc says I can work out/ref as much as I can stand the pain. If meniscus is torn does this make sense? He said do not over stretch the knee/quad.

Hopefully it is just fluid. MRI will tell the tale. Good luck.

Mine does. I had surgery on the left one, still hurts. Go in the 25th to check them both out. Biggest thing is when your legs go, it changes your lifestyle. Take care of your knees.

Changes lifestyles, ain't that the truth. Repaired 12 years ago, looking at replacement now..

Torn meniscus can certainly slow you down. I used to be a decent distance runner, can't run now, due to meniscus damage. Knees swell up something fierce when I try to run or overuse them. Pretty constant pain. Look at getting them scoped, but doc thinks that may not help. He's talking replacement, but I'm leery due to the potential effects on my professional life, and a friend died from a staph infection from knee replacement. But to answer the OPs question, you can go a long time if you can stand the pain, but eventually you'll get tired of it.

Nah, being young and bulletproof my knees work for me. Fugg em'

My knee would totally lock up with the torn meniscus. I was hunting in Arizona when it 'struck'. It was a BEAR walking up an hill/mountain.

Had surgery (after MRI confirmed torn meniscus) about 2 months later.

Been good for the past 22 years.

Had my left one repaired after tearing it deer hunting. Been pretty much 100% since then. I think it really depends on how much and how big the tear is. Mine was relatively small but the ACL was torn about 80%.

Do your PT and stay active.

I've had both of my medial menisci removed, #2 maybe 10 years ago. Went to work next day both times, no problems running marathons and 50Ks since.

If it's "only" a meniscus it should just be a small bump in the road (pun intended)

I've had two surgeries on my right knee. The first one was a mess and after 10-12 years of lockups and it going out, I had another done and have had none of the problems with it collapsing on me or locking up. Now, after 23 years of bone on bone, I'm close to needing a replacement. I'm going to try supplements, which seem to be helping, and put it off for as long as I can. It ain't fun.

But we ain't all carved out of cream cheese.....grin

I had my left knee repaired two years ago.I had three tears in my meniscus and also chondromalacia of the femoral condyle.Don't know how any of this happened,maybe wear and tear over time,maybe from impact of jumping off a trailer,just don't really know.Don't remember any one event that I can say caused the damage.Two years later,I say I did the right thing getting it fixed.I does take time to completely heal,but it's much better than feeling pain everyday.I did have a good doctor and I feel like nothing ever happened.

Had the right knee scoped one time and it is like nothing had happened to it.
The left knee was scoped 2 times,the first was after falling in the shower and twisting trying to land on the tub edge.
The Doc said it was torn up so bad that the meniscus was removed and he drilled several holes in the bone heads to(in his words)piss them off to generate scar tissue.
Because i was to young for replacement at the time.
After a wreck it was scoped once again and the scar tissue was shaped up some and it has worked fine.
It is definitely had to work thru when you are on your feet a lot much less running.

Here's the perspective of a guy who has had 8 knee surgeries and a knee replacement.

A torn meniscus can cause you a good deal of grief. I actually tore an ACL that hurt less than one of my meniscus tears. It all depends on where and why. If the tear is toward the outside of the meniscus, then they tend to hurt more, especially if it's a medial tear (toward the inside of the knee). If the tear is more toward the center of the meniscus (deep in, toward the center of the knee) then there is typically less pain.

Things that help...Anti-inflamatories are where it's at, but be careful; that stuff will burn a hole in your stomach and over time kill your kidneys.

There was a study done at Harvard Medical back in the late 1980's were a doctor ground up dried chicken cartilage and gave it orally to patients with arthritis in their knees and hips. The pain relief was quite impressive. Turns out eating cartilage promotes cartilage growth and repair. So the way you get the same effect is by drinking a glass or orange juice with one packet of Knox unflavored gelatin (gelatin is beef cartilage), a couple times a week. I've done this and it honestly works. If you have a bad stomach pick something other than orange juice. It's gritty and weird going down, but it has no flavor. Stir, take a drink, stir, take a drink and do that until it's all gone.

When the MRI is done, if they find a tear (and you probably have a tear) then you'll need surgery. If the tear is toward the outside of the meniscus, they'll do a menisectomy where they just cut out the part that's bad, and you'll grow it back. If it's toward the middle, there's very little circulation in there, so they'll repair it with a suture. I've had both, you really wanna hope it's the menisectomy; they're easier and you recover quicker.

Arthroscopic surgery is a walk in the park. Have it in the morning, you'll be feeling up to going out to dinner or a movie in the evening. Going out to dinner became kind of a ritual for me. All in all it does take a good 3 weeks before you're back to about 90%, and 6-8 weeks for the last 10%.

I remember the good ole days.

Thought I tore my left meniscus 2 weeks ago bowhunting after dragging out my buck by myself. Next day did all I could to barely gimp around. Took a few advils afterwards, then stopped. Don't like pills, and I can do pain.

Guess it wasn't torn because just yesterday I started feeling a lot more normal. No matter, things ain't like they were 30 yrs ago.

-Ken

depends where and how its torn.....and be warned the MRI doc may call it torn when it isnt....forget what its called but there is a meniscal tear that MRI reading docs love to diagnose but when a knee doc opens you up never finds....was the first knee injury i was diagnosed with via MRI and it turned out i just bruised the meniscus.....one of the damn good docs said the only time he has ever seen that sort of tear was with a parachutist that had a jump go wrong and a shoot not totally open and landed with his knees locked....[bleep] if i can remember what its called...did tear it for real in a different spot some years later..where does it hurt?

My right knee has been swollen for over a week. It does not lock up but clicks/cracks on the outside. The pain starts on the outside in the morning. By mid morning as it swells tighter I feel pressure under the top of my kneecap. By lunch the whole top half of my knee is puffy tight/dull ache. I teach science and am walking around non-stop from 7:45-1:00. Cannot attempt to bend my lower leg back and grab my ankle(Quad stretch). Pain is not excruciating; just a dull, continuous ache. Refereeing a football game tomorrow will be sporty. MRI at 8:00 in the morning.

You probably have a pint of fluid in there.Have the Doc syringe it out and take some anti inflammatory`s.

What do you expect, being as old as Moses?

I hear ya! I am 54 and can still run under 5 in the 40. Well; before this anyway.

My most recent bucket handle tear. Had one on the left knee about 14 years ago. Right knee shown was in May of this year. I knew right away what it was. Knee just totally shut down and couldn't put weight on it. The flap of cartilage folds over in the joint and then may straighten back out. That's why your knee goes in and out with a cartilage tear.

let the swelling go down before surgery, 50% of the time the popping/clicking means nothing, even people with perfectly healthy knees will do it....if the pain(before swelling) is on the side of the knee and not behind the knee cap it may very well be torn, thats where i tore mine the last tine...if my knee cap is noon, back of the knee 6 i tore the meniscus in my right knee at 3 o'clock.....the bruising was from 11-1 o'clock on the same knee when i did that first injury....

257heaven
I don't want to be a party pooper, when I had my cartilage tore
up in a car accident and had pacman clean it up(ortho) it looked like a pacman on the screen. Arthritis set in and within 3 years I had a new knee, just saying. I hope you don't have that happen.
Good luck. Cheers NC

Had the MRI done. Tried to get the person who did the MRI to give me a hint of what they saw (my appointment with the Dr is not till Tuesday). She would not tell me a thing.

most the time unless its really obvious they cant tell yah much anyway as they arent a doc, they have just been trained how to run radiological equipment.....and meniscal tears arent the easiest thing to see anyway, especially if its sitting in the normal position and not pulled up

Good evening Moses,

Having had two cartilage trims, and two ACL rebuilds, and being around the same vintage as you I have some familiarity with what you are dealing with.

A couple of things...

MRI's are not always conclusive and (in my experience) the tech will never share the results with you, only the doctor.

Normally to detect torn meniscus my doctors have kind of manipulated my knee. The MRI was to determine ligiment damage.

Just had my 4th procedure in August. Torn cartilage from last years moose hunt. Walked in, walked out, climbed a (small) mountain with my daughters the following weekend.

Cartilage tears on me have caused constant pain and swelling and restricted my mobility. If you can they are very worth doing.

Hope this helps.

Dang. Hoping that doesn't happen too. But if it does, one of my good friends provides appliances for surgeries and he can hook me up. LOL.

Had a meniscus scope two years ago - doc scraped the back of the knee cap for the bit of arthritis that was present as well.

Back to full-strength in no time.

I had a bucket handle tear around 1989 from playing with a St. Bernard. Dog leveled me, I hyper flexed, and suddenly couldn't extend my knee.

I took month's of ribbing for getting my arse kicked by a dog.

rattler's making sense here. Doc's can't always tell exactly what's wrong without looking inside. A meniscus tear near the edge can, in theory, heal since it gets adequate blood supply. My knees were generally good until age 57 when I dislocated my right knee badly. Fortunately, nothing tore and the ER doc was actually a little disappointed there was nothing to fix. Later swelling and popping was due to forming a Baker cyst that exploded on its own a day or two before seeing the surgeon. MRI's on both knees show lots of deterioration but I've gotten a lot better by strengthening my knees. Still some pain and can't do what I used to but getting better. My surgeon tells me new knees are in the future but also shakes his head and says a man my age with the knees he saw on the MRI just shouldn't be able to do one deep knee bend let alone twenty in front of him

My left knee started hurting almost 2 years ago. It would come and go. I struggled with it for several months before I had a friend who is an athletic trainer look at it. He set up an appointment with a surgeon for further evaluation. Like you X-rays looked good, but the MRI showed significant damage.

Mine wasn't a normal tear, but they said it was from 54 years of hard use. A significant portion of mine looked like it had been pounded with a hammer.Surgery removed the damaged part.

People respond differently to recovery and therapy. I did great for 4 weeks and thought I was almost ready to come off therapy. I still don't know what I did but around week four I tweaked something and was in worse pain than right after the surgery for about a week. The pain ended about as soon as it started and by week 6 I was pretty much over it.

Ten weeks after surgery I completed a 12 mile hike in some of the most rugged terrain in the Smoky Mt National Park. For a few months I had occasional knee pain after hiking, hunting or biking, but never notice it anymore.

Tore mine returning a kick vs Boise State - rare for a D-lineman. About every three months it will lock up momentarily and be sore for a week, otherwise it doesn't bother me. I'm not having it looked at unless it gets a lot worse.

Dr called with a report on my MRI. Meniscus is torn. Have an appointment Tuesday to set up surgery. I have a week long deer hunt the week of thanksgiving in West Virginia. Can I have this surgery before that and be able to climb?

possibly.....last time i had a scoped knee surgery which was to fix a tear, had surgery on Thursday and was back to work on Monday....by the next Monday i was fine....but i had surgery a long time after the injury so all the trauma from the initial injury other than the tear was long healed....

Count on a full week to heal prior to hitting the bush.

I keep forgetting about the differences in our medical systems. I tore mine in late August of 2013, got it fixed August 1 2014 in Canada. Around here that is on the quick side of the average wait for this procedure.

about the time of one of my knee surgeries i was going up to Canada alot, a friend of mine in Moose Jaw loved giving me chit about how much better the Canuck system was, till we both needed knee surgery at the same time for similar injuries.....i was healed from my surgery before he got to get an MRI for diagnoses....he wasnt so proud of his system then.....not saying ours is perfect but getting these types of non-life threatening but needed surgeries done in a timely manner we do kick Canadas rear by quite a bit...

Depends on how good your surgeon is. But I think if you can have the surgery a month before your hunt....you might be okay. Mine all went very fast from time of injury to surgery and my surgeon is the local college sports teams' surgeon and specializes in the least invasive procedure possible. I had mine on Monday......went back to work on Thursday, walking without crutches and without pain......and I was working in the yard/mowing/weedeating on Saturday.

ETA: Sorry about your diagnosis......I wish you the best and a fast recovery.

Depends. Probably yes. I'm your age.
My first meniscus tear in my right knee. I packed a whole whitetail doe out of a steep gorge one month after the surgery. One year later, I had the left knee done. It was a slower recovery. The difference was, after the quick recovery following the first surgery I felt pretty cocky after the second and got back on my feet too soon. I spent all day on my feet just two days after the surgery. Big mistake.
You can be up and walking the day of the surgery. But if you DO get up and go, the recovery will drag out longer.

You stay off your feet a few days, be on your feet as little as possible for a week or two, keep it iced down and not get inflammation in there and you'll probably be good to go one your hunt.
Go too hard even though you can or referee another game and maybe not. Good luck.

...and quit running. You're doing nothing but pounding them quickly into early replacement.

yeah i agree with this....very important to take it easy that first week after surgery, if you dont you will just piss stuff off and prolong the healing quite a bit.....also would not referee between the surgery and the hunt, unless refereeing means more to you than hunting.......

Lets see now. I am able to sleep about 3 to 4 hours a night. I actually sleep better in the recliner. That because you are not twisting or putting any pressure on the knee.

I have a bakers cyst on both legs and the injured leg cyst is about the size of a pear. I could tell that from looking at the MRI yesterday with the doctor. it will not go away until the knee is repaired. Ge go figure on that one.

Also my first number for blood pressure has never been this high before. We are talking about 40+ points upward, they indicated that the pain could be causing the spike in my blood pressure. have you had your BP checked?

I Had x-rays and a MRI and i am scheduled for surgery in 13 days. It will not get any better and will only get worse. I was told to refrain from any activity. Walking only makes it worse.

You can only take so many over the counter drugs.

Hmmmmmmm. We're all different and it certainly depends on the severity of the tear but I wouldn't count on it. A month after mine, while getting around alright, I would not have pushed it.

The Packer doc did mine. I asked him how he gets guys back on the field in three to fours weeks when I'm hesitant to even do a 1 mile jog?

His answer, "1) they're genetic freaks 2) they're rehabbing 6-8 hours a day, 3) they're not 100% at that stage".

I'd recommend rehab immediately after surgery - they were cranking on mine the next morning.

Had the surgery two hours ago. Extensive tear of the posterior root, posterior horn and body of the medial meniscus with extension to the superior articulating surface with the smaller oblique branch tear extending across the inferior articulating surface. Some misplaced meniscal fragments. Lateral meniscus has a small tear. I am still spinning from local anesthesia. Doc said he is puzzled how I got around for the last two weeks. Have no clue about recovery.

wow.....you wrecked yourself good....listen to the physical terrorist and DO NOT push farther than what they say and you will get on your feet as fast as is possible...ignoring the PT and doing your own thing will only make the healing process longer....do what the Doc and the PT say to the letter or suffer the consequences and prolly be out the hunt you want to go on for sure...

This. I'm sure they'll be bending and torturing you in the morning.

I look forward to it!