Another Partial Meniscectomy: My Third Knee Surgery

Three years ago, I recovered from my second knee surgery, a partial meniscectomy. That was a little over a year after recovering from my ACL reconstruction and meniscus repair.

Since then, I’ve dealt with some minor issues, but generally nothing major, as you can read about in my 3-year post-op update.

But since then, things have changed.

On September 9th, 2022, I had my third left knee surgery, another partial medial meniscectomy.

Here’s that story.

Medial Knee Pain

The first sign that something was wrong was the medial knee pain I started to experience.

In August 2022, I headed back to Turkey for my next professional soccer season. The pre-season quickly intensified, and we began training 2x per day with ample running. It wasn’t long before I began to experience medial knee pain, right along the joint line.

As I describe in my previous follow-up blog, I experienced medial knee pain occasionally, especially after a lot of high-intensity exercises. Given that we also train on turf, I was not surprised or overly alarmed by this.

Normally, a little rest and some more diligent care for my knee helped this pain. Given that I only had part of my medial meniscus and continued with professional soccer, I expected to deal with some discomfort.

But something was a little different this time. The pain kept getting worse and worse, and nothing I did could alleviate it.

Intensifying Pain

Over the course of the second and third week of the preseason, my medial knee pain increased. It began to deeply ache at night, making sleep very difficult.

I tried ice, heat, foam rolling, ultrasound treatment, and several other rehab methods. But the fact was that I was still training. This made the pain impossible to get rid of.

As I continued, I began to think there was something more serious going on. Based on a knee injection I had in my non-operated knee the spring before, I thought the pain could be due to some cartilage wear. The other thought in my head is that there was, once again, an issue with my meniscus.

It got to the point where the pain continued at rest. I felt the same pinching, aching, uncomfortable medial knee pain during walking, running, sleeping, etc. Even after 3 days of rest, the pain continued.

Locking Knee

On September 8th, three weeks into pre-season, we had a friendly against a youth boys team. While I felt some pain during the warmup, it was more bearable after the three days off we’d had, so I was playing the scrimmage.

Within the first 20 minutes, something strange happened. During a routine cut, I felt the pain in my knee completely shift locations. It went from the sharp medial knee pain to a strange feeling in the back lateral area of my knee.

This heavily reminded me of my second surgery, when my original meniscus repair had failed. In my head, I felt like a piece of my meniscus could be displaced again.

I was able to finish the scrimmage, but the pain got worse after. After sitting for about 30 minutes, my knee was not moving normally when I got up.

Once again, my knee was locking. It was not completely locked like previous times, but I could not straighten and bend it fluidly. It would feel “stuck” and then make huge cracks before completing the range of motion.

This is when I knew something was very off.

Heading to the Doctor

Upon feeling this locking in my knee, I knew I needed to go in. The staff was already aware of the ongoing battle I’d been having with medial knee pain. I let the captain know it was now urgent I get a scan.

The next morning, the team brought me to the doctor. After seeing the doctor, they decided to do an MRI.

Essentially, I had another medial meniscus tear.

This was certainly frustrating, but not the worst news I’ve had regarding my knee.

While I could have had the option to attempt rehab, given my history and intent to play soccer at the same level, I did not think this was best. Previously, I had a torn meniscus only worsen with playing, and I did not want the tear to worsen. Not to mention, the locking was a concern to me.

Factoring in these things, we decided a diagnostic arthroscopy was best.

What I didn’t exactly expect was to go immediately into surgery.

The Surgery: Another Partial Meniscectomy

In the U.S. there’s virtually no situation in which I’d have an arthroscopy the same day as the diagnosis, so I was not expecting to go into surgery when I went to the doctor that day.

Still, that’s what happened.

It was a pretty strange feeling going into surgery in a foreign country without family or even my closest teammate there.

But that day, I had surgery.

As expected, they trimmed out the meniscus tear and cleaned some cartilage, aka a partial meniscectomy

This day marked my third knee surgery on my left knee and the beginning of another rehab.

I’m now 6 weeks post-op and nearly back to playing. I’ve recorded plenty along the way and will be creating updates shortly.

In the meantime, you can review the weekly update videos that I’ve made on Instagram and TikTok.

Leave any questions below about partial meniscectomy and the recovery process so I know what information will be most helpful to include.

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