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Hi,

It seems through the help of some health care professionals and personal investigation (No I have't seen a specialist, still looking for a good one)
I have a strained or torn knee meniscus.

I'm resting and understand there are 2 options or expectations. It will heal..sorta or fully, or I will need surgery.

Since that's exactly what a specialist will tell me I figured I'd post here and search for some golfers who may have experienced this and what they did and how it affected their game.

I went through a similar situation and despite seeing the best sports orthepedists got 2 mis-diagnosis and wasted $200! This was with tennis elbow.

Knee braces? OTC medications? Excersize/therapy I'd be interested in hearing any and all treatments and results.

Thanks,

WarrenA

I had the surgery a few (8?) years back. Basically I had a torn the inner portion of my medial meniscus. Due to the location surgery was my only option as the lack of blood supply to that area prevented healing on it's own.

After surgery I was on crutches for a few days the had a few weeks to a month of therapy, which I didn't take to seriously, being 21 +/-, and everything turned out OK.

I wasn't playing alot of golf at the time, but was still actively playing soccer and hockey and missed minimal time after my therapy sessions.

I tore my inner medial meniscus in Jan 1996 while playing basketball. I went to the doctor and he said lets see if it gets better on its own. Well after hobbling around for a year we decided it wasn't going to get better so I got surgery May 1997. I was up and around after 3 days and was playing golf again in about a month. I was 34 when I hurt it and sometimes I forget which knee it was I had surgery on. The best exercise I found was laying leg curls. Most gyms have a machine you can lay on and curl weights with your legs. Expect your thighs to loss alot of muscle also. Good luck.

Perfectly said! I had the same thing here

I tore my medial meniscus playing raquetball when I was 22 and in the Air Force. They gave me physical therapy, was on crutches about 2 weeks, and about 6 months later I could play raquetball/run/etc. again. Wasn't playing golf at that time, but I'm sure I could have done that within a month or 2 of getting off the crutches. Almost 2 year's to the day later, I was in a raquetball tourney when I went down again. This time they suspected I also strained the ACL and MCL. Again, they put me in a brace for a couple of weeks and I had therapy 3 times a week. This time it was almost a year before it felt stable enough again to really stress it. Started playing raquetball and 3-on-3 basketball. Was just getting my raquetball game back up to competition level, when it went out again! At this time I was stationed at Hurlburt Field in northwest Florida, and they sent me to Eglin AFB Hospital to have it looked at. There just happened to be one of the top orthopedic surgeons in the country (not just the USAF) serving there, a Major Cherry. He read thru my history and immediately scheduled arthroscopic surgery to see what was going on. I stayed awake and watched the whole procedure on the TV monitor! Anyway, there was what they a "bucket handle" tear in the avascular (no blood flow) part of the medial meniscus. This "bucket handle" would flip up at inopportune moments and lock up the knee joint, causing the ligament's to strain, etc. He clipped off the "bucket handle", cleaned up some odds and ends, and a week later I was walking on it. Had to give the ligaments about 3 more months to strengthen. Since then I haven't had any problems, and it's been 16 years since the operation. Arthroscopic techniques, anti-inflammatory drugs, steroids (legal ones!), etc. make downtime from such surgery today seem like nothing.

Here's a good link explaining meniscus tears - I found it interesting!
http://orthopedics.about.com/cs/meni...a/meniscus.htm

Best of luck! With proper care you'll probably only miss 4-6 weeks of golf!