Updates! So that first MRI was not great. It was done with a only 1.5T machine at a small lab, and the radiologist who wrote the report on it diagnosed on a particularly blurry image. When i went to see the GP to get the report, she freaked me out made things were seem far worse than they actually were. But thankfully she had written a specialist referral and so I could finally see an expert, 3 months after injury, i'd finally get to see someone who knew about treating knee injuries. The GPs had just wasted my time with pointless scans and 'resting' which only made my leg muscles completely detrained and inhibited and ultimately did nothing to actually address the root of the problem. I wanted an MRI from day 1 but they simply would not do do one, it took a miracle to even get one in the first place (as i described earlier).
The ortho was looking at the MRI when i walked in and he said, yeah this isn't the best image, im not sure really sure I see what the radiologist had reported etc. I explained how i hurt myself 3 months ago but i couldn't see him until now. He was annoyed that it took that long to do an MRI.
He looked over my knee a bit and reassured me that i was going to be fine then finally said, we'll get you to do another MRI. At the hospital with a 3T machine. And the radio techs and radiologists were top notch at the hospital as opposed to the local lab near my place. This was what I was hoping for when i walked in to see him because to my eye, the image looked blurry too and i was hoping for a 3T MRI. But the catch was i had to wait 6 weeks till i saw the ortho again to get the MRI report. He thought PT would help me that's why he suggested 6 weeks. In the meantime he had told me to see a physiotherapist, to restore function to my leg muscles which had stopped firing (my quad pretty much disappeared), which i went to once and decided it wasn't going to be worthwhile. She had me do random weird exercises using the rope pulldown, that assume you're the typical sedentary person who needs 'core strength'. I was especially disappointed because i was told she works with AFL athletes but i guess when you're dealing with young elite athletes, they must practically must heal themselves. All she needed to do was touch my abs to see i have no lack of ab development, it's not easy to stabilise heavy squats as a taller dude without a lot of core strength, the leverage just makes it impossible not to have impressive core development. Yes i had told her i had a history of heavy weight training.
So 6 weeks later i would see the ortho again, i had taken NSAIDs since i first saw him at his advice, he said taking the NSAID and training would work better because it would let the body break the pain-muscle-inhibition cycle and allow me to gradually restore function to the muscles that had become dormant. It sounded good in theory but the problem was, my knee was still fucked up. So while his trick worked, the swelling in my knee went away significantly that it wasn't too dissimilar to my left knee , the pain remained at certain movements but i could start training again with some discomfort, eg at the bottom of a squat it hurt. Fully extending the leg with resistance hurt. So i stopped trying to rehab it, because i could tell the problem was just not going to be be fixed with exercise.
I walked into his office for the 2nd time and he was looking at the 2nd MRI. This is much better he said. I had reviewed it prior to seeing him and i could agree. The detail was amazing, jaw dropping. It picked up 3 bits of loose cartilage 3mm big, etc. He said do you want to continue with conservative treatment or do you want to do surgery? I blurted out surgery! He said i thought so. So 3 days later im getting the first surgery of my life. The whole thing took less than 9 minutes, they gave me a usb thumb drive of the whole thing. What i got was basically one of those cleanup surgeries NBA players get. A knee arthroscope. 2 days later i was off crutches, 3 days i was walking more or less with a normal gait. 2 weeks later i was off the NSAIDs and pain free doing exercises which previously hurt etc.
I've started rehabbing now .. but weirdly my leg muscles are not really responding to training. They wont activate properly .. when i do the leg extension machine, my R leg is half as strong as the L leg. it starts shaking uncontrollably even with light weight on the exercise. But at 4 weeks post, i can squat pain free now. I still haven't got full rom back though, but close to it. Apparently it takes about 6 to 8 weeks to restore normal function post .. something to do with synovial fluid taking that long to go back to normal.
tldr: things are on the up
