I haven't posted anything in awhile, I am sorry about that. Things have been kind of crazy. I had my appointment at the Medical College of Wisconsin with Dr. William Raasch last month.
The appointment pretty much went how I was expecting, the doctor things that Autologous Chondrocyte Implantation is my best shot at a somewhat normal knee. As I am sure most of you know, ACI actually consists of two surgeries. During the first surgery, the doctor will use a scope to take a look at the inside of my knee and assess the damage as well as harvest the cells to send to Carticel. Also, during this procedure, Dr. Raasch will take a look at my medial tibial patella (the site of my previous Microfracture). Depending on whether the Microfracture worked or not (which it probably did not) he would like to perform a Tibial Osteotomy during the actual implantation to take pressure off of that portion of my knee. I had come to terms with my needing the ACI, however, the mention of the Osteotomy kind of freaked me out. On one hand, it would be best to do both of the surgeries at once because both will leave me non weight bearing for 6-8 weeks so I might as well knock it out in one big swoop, however, the recovery will be huge. They will remove a wedge of my tibia in order to reallign my knee (he says I am slightly knock knee'd.... RUDE).
I have read soooo much research and information on all of these surgeries as well as all about the recoveries but I still have a lot to think about. First and foremost: my rehab. I need to figure out if my new surgeon expects me to go to his rehab clinic and if that is the case, I need to figure out my transportation situation. Milwaukee is about a 45 minute drive from where I live and I (obviously) will not be able to drive myself. Theoretically, I could continue at the Physical Therapy clinic I am at now (the Naval Hospital down here in North Chicago) but there is a reason why I was referred to a different hospital... because the surgeons at my current hospital do not usually perform ACI which means that the physical therapists are not familiar with the protocol. This fact scares me the most because this surgery will have a very strict and very delicate 3 phase rehab regime. I do not want to go through all of this and commit myself to an 18 month recovery only to discover a year down the road it didn't work because my physical therapist is not familiar with my unique situation.
Blehhhh... A lot to think about.
