Did My Knees Really Get Better Or Do They Just Feel Better (And Does It Matter)?

A long title but I couldn’t think of a good shorter one.

After reading my story, some people say something like this:

Why don’t you get another MRI (or some other test) that shows whether your knees really healed? That would prove whether your program really worked.

To be sure, this kind of comment has never been phrased in a hostile way. There’s no implication I’m a liar or fraud. Rather, people have a deep curiosity -- the same as I do actually -- about what changes physically occurred in my knee joints between the worst days of my condition (when I was suffering each day in Hong Kong) and now.

If I could do such a test (for cheap), and it could measure such a thing, I’d do it in a heartbeat. Hell, I’d love to know. Armed with the test results, I could probably sell five times more books. ;)

But it’s not possible. Here’s why.

(1) Simply having an MRI done would cost a lot; I’m guessing at least $1,000. And my health insurance company isn’t going to pay for a “there’s nothing wrong but I’m curious about what my knees look like” MRI.

(2) I don’t have an ideal MRI to compare it against anyway. True, I had images taken in Hong Kong in early September 2007, but that was before my disastrous experiment with weightlifting to strengthen my quads (which really trashed my knees). An MRI done in November or December of 2007 might have shown more damage.

But here’s the big reason:

(3) My original MRI exam was only somewhat useful in identifying my problem and determining the extent of it. Actually, “somewhat useful” may be a too-kind phrasing. My MRI basically said I had changes consistent with mild chondromalacia. So it found no giant potholes in my cartilage that a subsequent exam might show had healed.

My suspicion is that if a surgeon had cut open my knee, he would have spotted some kind of more obvious cartilage damage not detected by the MRI. But I never went that route (thank God). So, like many knee pain sufferers, I don’t have a good baseline test that says, “Wow, your cartilage is really messed up!” I suspect I was on the verge of going downhill fast, but I was fortunate to fix my knee pain in the relatively early stages.

So how do I know there was damage in the first place and I didn’t just suffer from some weird neurological ailment?

Well, as I relate in the book, there was a lot of noise from my knees when I dropped into a squat (as if I were about to sit in an invisible chair). My knees were so loud that my doctor felt compelled to be blunt and opine that the joints would never get better. Also, when I went into a deep crouch -- which was hard to do and uncomfortable -- and then straightened up, there was a loud, ugly “ripping” noise.

But now those disconcerting sounds, whatever they indicated, are either gone or much quieter (I can still hear a little crunchiness in my knees, but it’s not painful at all). I’m back on the bicyle, riding as hard as ever. I can sit at my desk again through a long 10-hour-plus day without issues.

Do I have a before/after set of tests that shows the improvement? No. But even if I did, would it matter? I’m not so sure it would. Just from the way I feel, I know something in my bad knees sure as hell healed/improved significantly. And I’m pretty confident of that, whether or not those changes could be detected by an MRI or some other test.