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I have patella cartilage damage in my right knee and am getting it scoped tomorrow to clean out the damage and clean up the remainder. Has anyone else gone through this? What can I expect in terms of the time it will take to rehab?
Thanks for the help guys!

I had my right knee scoped for the same thing many years ago after a snow skiing accident in Oregon. Honestly, the surgery was absolute cake. I had it done Friday (like you are) and was back to work on Monday. You can walk home after the surgery and get back to working out (with the supervision of a PT) almost immediately. Just make sure you ask your Dr. what is and isn't allowed. You'll be fine though.

I also had an ACL reconstruction on the same knee (tore it three years after the scope wakeboarding). Again, cake surgery. I "walked" to the car after surgery (with a leg immobilizer) and was in rehab in a week I think. I was off work for 4-5 weeks, but mainly because I hated my job. I could have gone back sooner.

Best wishes to you for tomorrow and then the recovery, too!

Tell us how it turns out, please . . . I'll probably need to have the same thing done on my left knee soon . . .

Cheers and good luck!

Thanks guys... I'll definitely post about it either tomorrow or Sat.

I have had three scopes on my right knee and one on the left! I have rheurmatoid arthritis and the inside of the knee was, as the surdeon said, 'cleaned up'. So I guess there was not much chopping done They were all very straightforward with very little post op pain. I was fully mobile in 5 days. Low intensity cv work was ok by the end of the second week but I did not do any lower body resistance work for three weeks, so just did upper body stuff

Ask the surgeon what you can do when post op. Hope it goes well.

Best of luck for a speedy recovery-make sure you stay on top of your rehab!

Keep us posted.

mike3

Well guys, had the surgery and it went pretty well I guess. No complications or anything like that... just a lot of damaged cartilage. There was lots of long, fibrous fuzz in there that had to be cleaned out, and even a large piece of floating cartilage that kept trying to elude capture! It probably corresponded to the large divot missing from a section of cartilage that left exposed bone.
Overall I guess it was a mess in there.

There was no walking to my car, or any amount of walking yesterday. The knee started killing me around 9:30 yesterday night, and that began a pretty miserable night of no sleep and throbbing knee (I was given Vicodin for my post-op med and that doesn't work well for me). I finally got some Percocet today and have been able to get some sleep and move around a bit more.

So given all of this I think I will adjust my expectations and not think I'll be back on the tennis courts in 3 weeks.

Update 2: it's been 3 weeks since the surgery and my knee is responding better than I could have hoped.

Swelling is minimal. Pain is minimal, and only from the surgery portals. And the quad is finally coming back online and getting stronger by leaps and bounds each day. The recovery has been fairly dramatic and has even surprised my physical therapist. I'm now doing sprints on a stationary bike with increasing resistance in addition to quad contraction/pumping exercises.

Definitely a happy dude these days...

well done! . . . very glad to hear it . . . makes you appreciate the little things, no? . . . all's well that ends well . . .