My Torn Meniscus

Update: This page is by far the most popular on Cantabloggia. If you're interested in how a runner might recover from arthroscopic meniscus surgery, these later posts may be of interest:


My best mile in 5 years, 10 months after surgery
My best marathon ever, by 19 minutes, 20 months after surgery
Beating Lance Armstrong in the Boston Marathon, 25 months after surgery

MRI of my knee. At the end of that yellow arrow is a white area at the bottom of the black triangle which is the anterior horn of the medial meniscus. That would be a tear in the cartilage.

Well, I now have a decent explanation of why it hurts to run 100m. The medial meniscus is the cartilage that sits between the femur (the big black almost-circle above the arrow is the bottom end of the femur) and the tibia (below the arrow). It's the shock absorber of the knee. The white area right at the end of the yellow arrow above is evidence of a tear in the meniscus. The meniscus itself doesn't have much in the way of nerve endings, but I gather that running with a torn meniscus puts strain on lots of other things, since the bones above and below it are accustomed to working with a smooth, not torn, piece of cartilage between them. Looks like the best treatment is to cut off the torn piece, so you end up with a thinner but smoother meniscus. Arthroscopic surgery is probably in my future - hopefully with more pictures to come.

I thought it was very cool that I could get a copy of my entire MRI, complete with the software to read it, on a CD-ROM. No extra charge once the MRI is paid for. Hence the picture above.

I have a rule on this blog (occasionally violated) to always touch on at least 2 of the 4 themes. I couldn't really find a good architecture- or travel-related angle on this (running-related) injury, so I'm going for the musical angle. Songs about torn menisci are few and far between, but the following song:

My Blue Hawaii - Future Bible Heroes

does at least have the property that you can sing "My torn meniscus" in place of the title. Rest assured I have done so. I see a future Karaoke possibility here.

I also have been getting a lot of value out of my small collection of dance & techno music lately, as it is perfect for riding on the stationary bicycle, my alternate exercise of choice while running is off the menu. Here is one of my favorites:

Hey Boy Hey Girl - The Chemical Brothers

I think that song increased my pedaling cadence by about 10 rpm the first time I put it through the headphones. More from the grammy-winning Chemical Brothers another day.