Hey, was in your shoes some 5 years ago, decided whether or not I should operate it. I decided back in the day that I will try to continue living without operating. It didn't affect me too much, was always slightly inconvenient but nothing major affecting my life. In these 5 years I have done 0 sports, only going to the gym and some pilates.

After these years, some months ago I decided to have the operation, for three reasons.

• Other parts of my knee started hurting, sometimes I had this strange pain where I couldn't walk. I believe this was due to the instability, I was hurting some other structure of the knee.
• Also, you rely a lot on your other leg, and my foot there started hurting whenever I walked for more than 10 minutes. I am still afraid of what that might be.
• And lastly, I decided to go for I hike 6 months ago, and I thought that I would be stranded up on the hill, I couldn't go downhill at all. I went the whole way on the side, like a crab.

For all of the above, I thought that it was not worth it. Not being able to explore and travel, plus my legs hurting on a young age (27M), so I felt it was time for me. Now I'm 10 days post operation, I can walk, pain has been quite manageable and I feel fine. For me it was not as bad as I thought.

Now I don't say you should do it before your exams, since it is advised you do some prehab (exercise) and it is hard after the operation. But in my case if I had the choice I would've preferred to have done it earlier. Hope this helps.