Surgery came to mind.
Now, to be clear right from the outset: Surgery may be a good idea for you. In fact, it may be a great idea. It all depends on what's causing your knee pain, and whether a surgical solution fixes that.
What worries me: I think there are too many people in the situation I was once in, when I had chronic, diffuse knee pain that had no clear cause. After a while, their thinking goes like this:
I've tried everything they've told me to do. I don't seem to be getting better. I have nowhere else to turn. Should I have surgery?
Surgery as a last resort, when the doctor plans to look around your knee and "clean up" some areas of damage, seems like a potentially risky proposition.
This isn't like someone popping the hood on your car, spotting a loose battery cable, then tightening it down and then -- voila! -- the car works great again.
I suppose a surgeon can look for loose bodies and remove them. Fine. But when it comes to trimming and shaving the existing cartilage, how does a surgeon know exactly how much cartilage to remove? This knee joint you'll be using thousands of times a day, probably, and a screwup could leave you in even worse shape.
Which brings me to the word of the day: iatrogenic. It's an interesting word that I was unaware of before I began my knee pain journey. It refers to new injuries that are created by surgical intervention.
That's a sobering thought. You go under the knife to get better. What you may not realize: there's a not insignificant chance you'll emerge worse off.
I do think most surgeons are pretty good, and they certainly have your best interests in mind. But what they do is very, very hard, and they're not trying to fix a machine, but a human being. That's a task of a much higher order.
Again: I'm not trying to imply that surgery is never a good idea. It sometimes is. But before you commit, you should have a good idea of what the surgery is trying to do and what the chances of success are.
