All Kinds Of Bad News!

Well, I saw the orthopod today, and he gave me all the pictures from inside my knee and the plethora of different kinds of bad news. First off, I had actually completely snapped thru the meniscus on the farthest left side of my left knee. He didn't need to remove much, because I had exploded it away. He just had to clean up the fragments. The meniscus is now 30% gone. Besides being gone, it is to the extreme outside of the knee where the greatest pressure of landing occurs. Besides that being gone, the meniscus that remains near it he had to debride, so it is very thin. That takes another 10% or so away. He cleaned up the back of the kneecap so it looked like a baby's ass. He had to do more though. The Cartilage was badly torn up, and he said he spent the most time trying to create as smooth a surface as he could. It looked pretty in the picture. So, he said, how many days a week do you want to run. I said 4, he said 2, so we agreed to compromise on 3. Soft surfaces and short. No matter what, he said it will probably be painful running, and sore the next day. He will work with me to do the rooster comb every 6 months or so if I keep trying to run. I will obviously never race again, so thank God Deb was there to see my Grande Master Flash finale, the best race I had run in about 4 years. SOOOOO, I will get stitches out next tuesday, and go for two weeks of Physical Therapy following that, then do a hard bike and weight week, and they try to begin walking and jogging. I won't make any immediate decisions until I see how bad it goes. Will probably get a stability brace to try and keep as much pressure as possible off of the outside of the knee. I may consider the exercycle in the picture and go indoors for most of my fitness......won't make any immediate decisions now until I see where I get in a few months. But, I sure did have a wonderful run (pun intended) of 36 years!