Torn meniscus

Anyone here deal with this before? I fucked my shit up a couple of weeks ago (outside the gym) and I can't do squats for a few months.

How can I work around it? I was doing ss before. Should I just do upper body work? More deadlifts?

What's the recovery like? My doctor recommends repair which is on average 4-6 weeks on crutches and 3-6 months until 100%. How much of an impact would lifting before the injury have on recovery? I'd imagine having stronger legs is always a plus.

This is bullshit. I just got lifting into last year and now I'm going to get jewed out of all my progress

Tore my meniscus doing BJJ (inb4 gay) and I never got it repaired. I didn't squat for literally a year though and I regretted not just getting it fixed. It's been two years and I have no pain/issues but my knee does snap and crackle when I climb stairs. It's painless so apparently it's fine. Btw I started back up deadlifting only like two weeks after this happened.

Yeah they told me it's not going to get any better on its own.

I could opt to have the damaged piece just removed but that's an increased risk of arthritis and apparently only used as a last resort these days.

People live with these injuries all the time, I guess yours may be more severe. What does it "feel" like I guess? Like are you unstable walking around? Does it hurt when you aren't doing anything?

had a complete tear, they had to remove 80% of both medial and lateral in my right knee. Needed surgery, completely atrophied my right leg. Took up lifting as rehab.

I would say try repair if you are getting symptoms like locking and pain. After my surgery I wasn't even on crutches for a full week, but rehabilitation took a long time after that given how traumatic the injury was. Your doctor's estimates are extremely conservative and probably based on older and nonathletic people.

Not the end of the world though.

Torn all my meniscus in football. Docter said surgery would make it better, buthas a 50/50 chance to also worsen.
Since I am/was pretty jacked he told me it was fine if I train my legs properly so the muscles would stabilize the knee.
Did what he said and continued with my training.
To the day everything is perfect, although I cant do sweeps to right or left as fast as I could

I can walk without a brace without much of a limp but the knee starts to get sore if I spend an hour or more on my feet unless I put on the brace, then it's ok

I can straighten my leg about 95% of the way compared to my left one. I tried squatting to see how deep I could get but I started to feel shit moving around so I stopped. My right quad also feels smaller after just two weeks of the injury but that might just be because the injury prevents me from tightening it as hard

That's also more or less how I figured something was wrong in the first place: I lost my balance and fell down sort of sitting on my heel whilst helping carry furniture up stairs, woke up the next day with a sore knee, got into a deep bodyweight squat, felt a pop, joint got locked. Best guess is I twisted something during that awkward fall and that produced the tear, but it didn't really come apart until the next day

>Your doctor's estimates are extremely conservative and probably based on older and nonathletic people.
That's encouraging to hear.

I was told I have a bucket handle tear, and the flipping of the torn piece out is what caused the knee locking. I'm not sure how big the tear is.

What did they tell you about risk of developing arthritis?

Tore my meniscus 2 years ago. Recovery took 6 months roughly, which was depressing as fuck.

And don't worry user, the gains come back fast.
I wish you a speedy recovery.

What kind of tear did you have?

Medial tear. Honestly recovery could have been reduced to 3 months or less.

Nowadays It still feels somewhat awkward at times but no pain. It definitely affected my athleticism (used to play soccer/run track).
However I surpassed my pre-injury lifting numbers (e.g. squat: 140kg to 170kg).

mfw I've had some retarded knee injury for 3 years now, I even took a MRI and got no diagnosis whatsoever (everything looked healthy, same with physical test). Still either hurts while running or even sitting or doesn't bother me during a full day of hiking.
That being said having pain is definately more often the case

In the meantime I suppose I can just do upper body work.

Is there a cardio warmup I can do without using? I used to do 10 minutes on a stationary bike.

I don't think my gym has one of those bikes you can hand-pedal either

I had a buckethandle tear too.

My risk of arthritis is, uh, 100%, so it's more a matter of when rather than if. I have seen encouraging cases of cadaver arthroplasty and some good stem cell results, so I might be a candidate for some prehabilitative surgical options, we'll see.

Squats have always been my weakest lift due to knee pain, but I just take it slow. I can only squat 160 (compared to 235 deadlift) but it definitely hurts less than the year or two following the surgery, when it seemed to hurt all the time. I think all the lifting broke up the scar tissue, of which there was a ton because of how long I went without surgery, and floating cartilage was causing damage.

look up moviegoers knee

my guess is you have muscle tightness, if your pain is localised around the front and slightly lower on the knee then it's probably a patellar maltracking issue caused either by IT band or quad tightness. It's bugged me for years before I figured out what was happening

You cannot live long term with a torn meniscus.

You will have to get it repaired. Depending on the type of tear it will take about a month up on your feet and cost approx 10,000 dollars (without insurance). With insurance you probably pay 2 grand total.

Also once it is done it is like a switch has been flipped, the pain is pretty much gone.

You have to do some physical therapy to strengthen your knee and whatnot but it's a pretty easy surgery.

You would have to be poverty tier and too proud to stiff a hospital even with no insurance to not get this done.

>it's like a switch has been flipped, the pain is pretty much gone

not in my experience remotely, but the sense of disability is gone.

>it's like a switch has been flipped, the pain is pretty much gone

to an extent, some motions still feel awkward on the joint.

well to put it a little better the acute pain is gone.

Bottom line though is the guy should not just be a retardo and not get surgery.

Even if he was a broke ass with no insurance or a job he could just get the surgery and stiff the hospital on the bill and settle it a year later for ten cents on the dollar.

Likely he's under 26 and on mommy's insurance which is likely a nice PPO

yeah I've been reading up on non-surgical interventions but buckethandle tear is pretty much only fixed surgically

I'm surprised the radiologist or GP hasn't already referred him to an orthopedic surgeon

2 surgeries in, 2 years since last one. Bent knee 90 degrees forward. Now I squat again.

Protip if you really fucked your shit: Dihydrocodeine, oxy and tramadol all work well to numb it.

Pic related.

My insurance is pretty good, $300 deductible and 10% of the cost of surgery is what it'll cost me, so probably about 1000-1500

>I'm surprised the radiologist or GP hasn't already referred him to an orthopedic surgeon

I actually went straight to one and he'd be the guy doing the surgery too.