another knee question... POST SURGERY

so i am about 6 months out from ACL/meniscus surgery. i wound up tearing my meniscus really bad and so the doctor had to cut out a large part of the lateral meniscus and some of the medial meniscus as well. i returned to riding and i am doing more intense rehab.... squats, box jumps, flipping tractor tires, skipping rope, pivoting, cutting, etc. there is still some swelling in my knee and what i want to know is... the fluid from the swelling, does that cause a lot of the popping that i am still having, even 6 months out? also, sometimes it feels like there is fluid moving around in my knee when i walk, pivot, etc. keep in mind, i never have any sharp pains, and my knee never gives out on me or anything like that. it feels fine when i am riding and it feels fine when i work out. i can even do one legged squats and one-legged skipping, no pain, no problems nor giving out.

im just curious if the popping, and the fluid moving around is normal? and when i say "fluid moving around".. it almost feels like the fluid is literally moving around in my knee, but there is never any locking or shifting. i hope this makes sense. i just don't want to confuse these post-surgery symptoms with possibilities of re-damaging symptoms.

comments, opinions....

One thing I do know is you will know if you reinjure bc severe pain will follow. Your ACL should be as strong as it's gonna be after six weeks. The meniscus on the other hand I'm not quite sure. I only had partial and the popping still happens every once in a while especially my first sets back but everything was good at my year check up which was after the season. I would just ask your doc and if he doesn't sound convincing go get a second opinion. If it doesn't hurt I'd say you're prolly ok but then again my first ACL surgery ended with me back under four days later after he checked his noted and had doubt he used the wrong sutures. Good luck with your rehab man, it definitely is worth doing right when you get back on the water.

Although you may be working out and riding pretty hard it does take about 9 solid months to really feel fully recovered and it takes a year and half post op for your newly inserted acl to actually be stronger than the previous one. Up until then you will feel the swelling because you are pushing your new knee pretty hard. For example, after taking about a month off of working out (for wakeboarding of course) I did squats and other leg excersices and the next day I couldnt bend my knee fully. It took me a little while to figure out that my knee had swollen up because it wasnt used to working hard for about a whole month, and this a year removed from surgery .My knee still pops every once and a while and itll be a year and a half post op on feb 18th lol

It will take years for your "new knee" to feel normal. It really is a new knee and it takes time to figure it new performance characteristics out.

I was riding my board (just riding) at 3 months and was hitting the wake full speed at 5.5-6 months. By 7 months I was riding better than I was before I hurt my knee. That is a pretty risky approach by most standards, but it helped to keep me sane. I took the approach that if my doc says its fixed--its fixed, even if it still feels wierd (It felt just as you described).

My wife, on the other hand, took about 1.5 years after her ACL surgery to start doing flips again. Her personality is such that as long as it did not feel "Normal" she was not going to push it to the max. She did learn a lot in that time taking it easy and now her flips are much more consistant.

Everyone is different.

thanks for the replies. i am indeed pushing it really hard in the gym but i am not loading a whole lot of weight or doing high impact stuff. and my riding is not intense by any means. just wake2wake stuff for now. i will continue to take it easy and listen to my body. i am just concerned about the fluid moving around in there... its like i can't even describe it. i fees like a pop sometimes, then other times it fees like there is movement. but like i said before... there is never any sharp pain or giving way. and no tweaked feeling.

the doctor cleared me to ride, but its always good to know if others have had similar symptoms... post op.