Hey, What's Your New Year Resolution?

Happy holidays everyone!

Some of you have been frequent visitors, and frequent commenters, and I thank you for your involvement.

Others of you drop by for a while, ask a few questions, then fade into the background. That's fine, I know what you're going through. I spent many afternoons of my recovery ricocheting around the internet like a pinball, seeking bits of insight that might help explain what I was going through and how I could get better.

Sometimes, someone buys one of my books from Amazon or Smashwords. And every so often, someone returns a book (it's so much easier to return an electronic book!) And -- this will probably sound weird -- I think that's great. It's great Amazon has a policy that, if you don't like something, you can get a no-questions-asked refund. I love that. When I wrote "Saving My Knees," I really, really believed in the message. Still, I realized later after reading a few reviews that it wasn't for everyone.

Now, on to the new year! I hope that this will be a year of steady, gradual improvement for thousands of knees out there. I know that sounds boring, but sometimes slow and boring is the way to win the race.

So let's talk! Do you have a resolution for your knees, or for your recovery program? If so, share it below. I'd love to hear what's on everyone's mind.

Cheers, and best wishes.

Richard

Don’t Take That Meniscus in Your Knee for Granted

I just read an article about the meniscus, that rubbery, crescent-shaped piece of cartilage that helps absorb impact between the long leg bones that meet in your knee.

Decades ago, the common medical wisdom was that the meniscus wasn’t all that important, and when it was torn, surgeons simply took it out.

Of course common medical wisdom was wrong.

Patients who had their meniscus removed often developed arthritis in their knee later. That suggested the meniscus actually played a critical role.

Now we have new, and quite sobering, details about what happens when the meniscus is extracted from the knee.

According to a new study, “extensive cell death occurs within hours during vigorous exercise.”

Researchers used a powerful microscope to observe what was happening, minute by minute, as the vigorous activity was occurring. The article says that half of the cells that create new knee cartilage were dead within four hours (I assume these cells were chondrocytes?).

Whoa. That’s really grim.

Now, an intriguing question (that the article doesn’t pose, but that occurred to me): Are people who have an injured/torn meniscus also susceptible to a certain amount of cartilage cell death? Because their meniscus isn’t working as well as it should?

For me, the bottom line is that I don’t find this study surprising. What I find more surprising is that medical savants of 40 years ago could have looked at a rubbery cushion in the knee joint and decided that it really wasn’t that significant.

Medical hubris at its finest.

One Reason Bad Knees Don’t Heal

So I found out that my brother, he of the torn meniscus, decided against surgery for now. He learned that his health insurance would leave him exposed on thousands of dollars of the cost and decided to take a pass. But his doctor told him he should expect to have a knee replacement in ten years.

How’s that for a future? Ugh.

Now, if I were him, I would not accept that. I can imagine a doctor saying the same thing to me about ten years ago, and today my knees are fine. But I also know that a lot of bad knees never heal. For us active types, there’s a very good reason for that.

Quite simply, it’s because we can’t give up what we love doing most. For me, it was cycling. For him, I think it’s hiking and weightlifting.

With knee pain, I think there has to be a sort of “come to Jesus” moment. Your knees have to get so bad, your misery so complete, that you resign yourself to the fact that everything must change.

Everything. And that means that sport that you love has to go.

I know I clung to cycling for as long as I could. I convinced myself I’d pedal differently, or stop going up mountains, and gradually the pain would go away. It did not. But I labored under this delusion for as long as possible, unwilling to face the truth.

Unwilling to have that “come to Jesus” moment.

I believe one key turning point in my recovery was fully, and unconditionally, accepting this statement:

I will stop riding my bicycle, and I may never ride it again, and I’m okay with that.

That was both a depressing and liberating realization. The sweaty physical activity I took part in, those wonderful, heart-pumping, intense workouts, involved cycling. Losing that seemed terrible.

But it was necessary.

I switched over to easy, high-repetition motion. For some people, that can be cycling. For me, it wasn’t. I found my body liked slow walking the best. I structured a program around that.

And, over the course of many months (as I detail in my book), I healed.

I’m not sure if my brother is at that point yet, where he can say, “I may never go hiking again, and I don’t care.” I don’t think so. But I think that’s the beaten-down point you have to reach, and in some odd way, embrace, before you can begin the journey up and out of a pit of despair.

What about those of you out there who are active? How have you dealt with this problem of resisting facing the reality of your limitations?