Meniscectomy question(Arthroscopic surg. for torn meniscus)?

I had the surg. on my left knee in the spring of 2000. I'm trying to remember to the best of my ability of the time-line of recovery. The actual surg. was a breeze as I remember. My sister is a operating room RN. at the hospital where it was done. And I personally knew at least 3-4 staff members that worked in that part of the hospital. I wanted to stay awake for the procedure and the anesthesiologist said, with a wink to my sister, "I'll make it real comfortable for ya, don't worry."

Boy he wasn't kidding either........I think you could have dropped a cement truck on me and I would have just laughed. Evidently the Surgeon, who was also a co-worker with my sister, wanted to make sure my discomfort levels didn't get to high after the procedure was done gave me a script for 30 Vicodins with 3 refills. Holy crap! I thought....for just 3 little tiny incisions. I think I ended up only using about 6-9 of them then went to Tylenol. I hate feeling fuzzy.

Anyhow...post Op went something like this:

crutches for 3-4 days with knee wrapped

back to work after 2 days....light duty gopher work.

swelling was down to almost normal after 7 days or so.

had 2 consults with PT 5 to 6 weeks after surg. was told which exercises to do and freq. and what to be on the lookout for in case Murphy showed up.

It was my occupation that really forced my knee to achieve full range of motion by early fall that year. I'm a cement mason/concrete finisher. Or I was at the time surgery. I would say the best I can remember it took about 3 months.

Workers Comp gave me a 1 percent permanent partial disability on left knee.

Hope that helped.

Good luck

G. Smith

I had this done when I was in my 20's. That was 30 years ago. I recovered very quickly and didn't need any kind of therapy. My knee was also back to 100% I think because you are so young and very active you should have a quick recovery. Good Luck!

I had my last meniscetomy 3 years ago, and sometimes it still swells. I think that it was about a month to 6 weeks before it went down, and I had full ROM.