Some of you all may remember my post on here about a year ago. I gave my injury (osteochondral damage in medial femoral condyle) time to heal, and while it did somewhat, it eventually plateaued. Walking was “ok” but running was still “no-way”. Not exactly how I wanted to spend the rest of my life, so I had the OATS procedure two days ago (and I just turned 22 yesterday, so I’m still somewhat young).
The surgeon seemed very optimistic after the surgery – he said it was a very tiny lesion that only required one plug. In fact, the cartilage was still smooth when he probed it, but it was gray and soft, so my guess is that it went through some sort of necrosis.
He said I could immediately be partially weight-bearing (but I’m not putting any weight on it because I am taking NO chances). And physical therapy started the next day after surgery. In fact, he said if I felt good that I could start light running at 3 months (!). I also didn’t have a neuroblock during surgery and I haven’t taken any pain killers because it hasn’t really hurt other than some twinges when I move it.
Well so far, so good. But I have a bad habit of screwing things up, so if someone has had this procedure before, is there something you wished you knew right after surgery that would have helped? Is it better to err on the side of less aggressive or more aggressive rehab? As rehab doesn’t actually expedite the new cartilage integration process (it merely keeps the surrounding muscles strong), I feel like it may be better to keep everything sort of slow. The risk with doing that is that the muscles will get stiff or unbalanced, which can lead to its own problems.
Thanks for the help!