Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Torn Meniscus slow you down?

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.