[Boring Personal Stuff] Knee Story

A little long knee-story.  I've always had crappy knees.  As a kid, my knees always hurt a little after playing like climbing trees, running, pretty much anything we did in gym class, and even riding my bike.  No huge thing- just something I expected.  When I knew my dad (a strange phrase, I know, but believe me, that back-story is even longer) he told me that his family members all had their knees replaced, as did he.  Knowing this, I've just sort of accepted my cranky knees.  At some point, about 5.5 years ago I was doing Kajukembo and while doing a front kick (yes, the same front kick that I'd been doing since I was 12) when I felt the craziest sensation.  It felt like tearing and like a guitar string in my knee string was plucked (I have no clearer description) all at once.   It continued to hurt, and would keep getting stuck, so I had to kick my leg to tear further whatever it was stuck on.  Beyond that, there was recurring pain in the front, like on the bone, farther back on the side, and sort-of underneath.  Time passed, because I figured I was hallucinating the problem and because my health insurance was only good in WV, but eventually I had an MRI.  The doctor said that I had a torn meniscus and maybe a partially torn ligament, but that a scope would be required to confirm.  The inside of the meniscus is non-vascular, so it doesn't heal.  The typical treatment is a minimally invasive arthroscopic surgery to remove the torn bits.  If the only affected area is the outer rim of the meniscus, they can do a repair.  Some, however do not have surgery and are fine to go on without it.  For a partially torn ligament, first they have to stick a scope in your knee to verify, because it is difficult to read on an MRI, and doctors can read false positives as well as false negatives.  Treatment is either a standard ligament repair or to wait and see if the thing heals on its own, which is possible if the tear happens to be in an area receiving a decent blood supply.  At the time I had a D.O. which is different from an M.D. in many ways that I won't go into here, but the relevant issue is that they tend to avoid recommending surgery unless it is absolutely required.  So, it was recommended to me that I wait, and wait I did as nothing got better.  In fact, it was worse and worse after each Kajukembo and Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu class, so I dropped one day of class, two, three, then the whole thing all together.  Also, I no longer had health insurance, so what's a girl to do.  So a couple of years go by and I find myself at a job with *wonderful* health insurance.  The problem being, of course, that I badly needed to have my wisdom teeth out.  I did, and before I could really justify some time off again, a better opportunity came by that did not include health insurance. (I assure you though, it was a great opportunity and I had a blast in that job).  So, I got the crappy "no pre-existing condition" independent stuff in case of a car accident or something, and another year went by.  I should mention that during these last couple of years, my other knee has gone through the tearing and getting stuck issues as well, but it is not nearly as bad as my right one. I, now, have decent insurance, but like so many other small windows of opportunity that I saw... I really really really don't have the time to take off for surgery, navigating on crutches (which I'm really bad at anyway), and rehab.  So here I am. :)