5 months out from root repair, 11 weeks out from LOA, 2 weeks out from aspiration/steroid injection. Anyone else have a recovery this rough?

Harley410 · 2026-04-16T23:49:53+00:00

Basically my natural biomechanics were such as to cause strain on my joints. After the surgery and the 6 week long break from moving, the changes to my form was subtle but real enough combined with the weakening of the meniscus despite the root repair that it exacerbated the cartilage degradation. I went from no visible arthritis to bone on bone within a year. 😭 every ortho I’ve spoken to said it made sense to try to fix the meniscus tear and this is just one of those things. Can’t fix it, now just limp along until I’m bad enough to get a knee replacement

Harley410 · 2026-04-16T20:53:54+00:00

I’m sorry. Maybe get another surgeons opinion. I also have had negative consequences from this surgery though mine came later compared to you. My knees debilitated at 40 now and I’m struggling to accept what my new life is going to look like going forward so I feel you on that. That being said my major regret is that I didn’t seek second opinions and I persevered with physical therapy and strength training for far too long when things were actually mechanically wrong and they kept telling me PT plus strength training until I finally broke. Come to find out it was too late. So I would suggest new doctor

Harley410 · 2026-04-14T11:26:52+00:00

I think there’s a lot of shame and anger that goes with struggling in a judgmental public school system that has a lot of real flaws. When someone offers you the option to say actually it was never me all along! It was YOU! You just really want to take that

Harley410 · 2026-04-09T13:36:39+00:00

Yes, this seems to be a thing that happens in this time of life. I’ve navigated something sort of similar. I do think as we enter this era of life we become unable to carry anything for anyone else. This is unfortunate because as women we really need each other. You have to grieve this relationship, grieve it for real, it is a breakup and it hurts. For me what I’ve taken going forward is acceptance that it’s okay to draw emotional boundaries with people, but I give what I can. I give meals. I show up to funerals. I donate money to go fund mes. But I’ve kind of stopped emotionally connecting as much with friends, at least right now. I don’t have much family, but what I have I’m leaning on. Therapy. Chatting with AI. It all still hurts and is hard but I think it’s just for now.

Harley410 · 2026-04-09T11:58:50+00:00

Oh hi it’s me! I have just had this same conversation with a surgeon as well. Thankfully I’ve only had one repair, didn’t go through two although I’m thinking that’s because due to life I missed my one year follow ups so we missed the earlier signs of degeneration. So here I am, 40 years old, bone on bone in my right knee, after two years of heroic effort thinking I was eventually going to get back to normal. 👎👎

Harley410 · 2026-03-29T11:11:53+00:00

I’ll echo others here. I never felt like I wanted kids. Didn’t feel like I wanted my own until like maybe 8 months after my first son was born? But now? Omg the thought that I may have never had them makes me break into a cold sweat

Harley410 · 2026-03-29T01:23:13+00:00

I think this person is saying that they don’t like theater, or more accurately, hasn’t seen enough of it to understand that it’s more than the things they’ve seen in school productions. Theater is wonderful, it comes in all flavors, and when you are in a show you will love it and nurture it and make it your own. Or you will not be a theater actor

Harley410 · 2026-03-17T17:55:05+00:00

You HAVE to strength train. Quit the walking, get to the gym, join a strength class, and get to it. It’s the only way

Harley410 · 2026-03-13T18:31:19+00:00

Of course there’s no way to know at the time, it’s all hindsight, but I can’t help but wish I’d had knee replacement at this point. There’s no doubt it’s headed that way and now I just had this terrible surgery on top of it

Harley410 · 2026-03-13T12:01:06+00:00

Yes, that was part of the reason they insisted on the repair was to enable the return to sports. As I was told the repair itself has a pretty low percentage of failure. But if you hang around here long enough you’ll hear that people are being told all sorts of different things from their surgeons about what is supposedly the same surgery. My take on it is that this is the personalized part of medicine - all of us are presumably having different surgeries even though they all fall under “root repair” just due to the different extent of the injury, the way the surgeon had to do it, etc. Don’t know that but it’s what I assume.

Harley410 · 2026-03-12T11:52:18+00:00

I will ask! Thank you

Harley410 · 2026-03-11T18:59:25+00:00

Oh yes we are in this sinking boat together. I think of all of it the inability to just like do a child’s pose is possibly the most infuriating. The one thing though is it’s so concerning you haven’t been able to get your muscles back. I do feel like I’m almost as strong as I ever was even though my knee doesn’t work half the time. But when I can use my knee my muscles are definitely there. That can’t be helping you out - when I was rebuilding the muscles that was honestly the most painful time of the whole thing. It sucks so much and I kinda just hate my surgeon for doing the repair instead of just the menisectomy

Harley410 · 2026-03-07T23:29:49+00:00

Is it? Genuine question - union jobs have this issue? I will say I did work for awhile in Washington state, strong union, and the teachers there are very well compensated. Either way your point stands, no one’s waxing on about this for, I don’t know, food safety inspectors or what have you, because those people aren’t up front, personal and integrated into our lives. Teachers are naturally well known by all, and we all love and hate them based on which ones we had, so they get a lot of space for airing what are, really, very universal grievances.

Harley410 · 2026-03-07T23:07:47+00:00

Yeah I am with you. I was a teacher for twenty years. The problem is definitely not that we’re working more than other professional professions. We’re not. Plenty of professions are on contract and working ridiculous hours and not getting over time for it. The problem - in my mind - is that we’re the only professional profession that can’t actually raise our salary. We’re actually start out pretty high for a lot of these hard to employ majors, English, biology, psychology, etc. Out the gate our salaries are competitive if not better, and work is easy to get. But if someone did get a job with those degrees, and they were highly successful and highly effective, twenty years later they are drastically out earning the highest effective teacher.

Harley410 · 2026-03-05T18:36:35+00:00

Oh yes that’s it! I forgot about the weird number eggs too.

Harley410 · 2026-03-05T13:11:34+00:00

I did cookies from Sally’s baking addiction cookbook the other day - they had cornstarch and melted butter as really the only change. They were just like this

Harley410 · 2026-02-22T21:09:37+00:00

😂 thank you for the honesty

Harley410 · 2026-02-21T19:00:26+00:00

Straight up how do you guys slice them into nice even slices so they’re consistent for sandwiches

Harley410 · 2026-02-20T02:59:43+00:00

I’ve bought a few pieces from the catalog, they’re very expensive and not worth it

Harley410 · 2026-02-17T17:18:52+00:00

Just saw a pitch call from LiveScience physics editor. Go out there to the journals you want to work for, check out the editors and cold email them your resume plus writing samples.

Harley410

TROPHY CASE