Background: 1973 surgery, 2012 pain onset.

In the fall of 1973, I had cartilage removed from my right knee. The cause of the damage was a fall while cross-country skiing the previous winter. Now, at age 63,I have had a good 41 years despite the missing parts (2:47:00 marathon, 100-mile running races, mountaineering, climbing, ski mountaineering, desert backpacks, lots of nordic ski racing), but for the past two years my knee gets inflamed on certain activities (mostly downhill walking). The cause is the bone-on-bone situation, and so it is time to get plastic cartilage and metal ends to the femur and tibia: total knee replacement.

The pain I had was an inflammation near the popliteus muscle. It started about January 2012, and I recall some bad days on a ski ascent/descent of Mt. Field in B.C. in April 2012, and, especially, on an 18-mile walk to Perseverance Arch on May 1, 2012. So it took 2.5 years for me to reach this point of deciding on surgery.

I first saw Dr. Cunningham in July 2013; I had had an MRI and consultation with an orthopedist in St. Paul in Nov. 2012, though that did not lead to a definitive diagnosis. Dr. C. gave me a cortisone shot, which worked well for a few weeks (and which confirmed his diagnosis). Fall 2013 was bad. Winter 2014 was fine. A Synvisc shot in April 2014 provided no relief at all.

Here is a picture, from the front, of my right knee (Oct 2012). The spacing on the medial side (lookers right) is down to 0. Compare with the spacing with the artifical knee, in the pics section below.

knee_2.gif

Created with the Wolfram Language