Making the Decision to Have MACI Surgery

Deciding to have MACI surgery was pretty easy:  I wanted to play tennis and without MACI surgery, that was not going to happen.

While it sounds quite black and white for me, it may not be the same for everyone else.  For me, I had a number of factors that weighed in favor of having surgery aside from my desire to rip fuzzy green tennis balls across a net.

Of note, the following factors weighed in favor of going forward with surgery:

• Age:  I was thirty-five years young at the time of operation.  
• No co-morbid conditions:  Aside from the cartilage defect my knee is remarkably intact. 
• Weight:  I am generally of a healthy weight aside from my ever present desire to "lose five pounds."
• Personal Commitments:  I am not married and do not have children meaning that I can devote a lot of time towards rehabilitation without concern of detracting from other personal commitments.
• Professional Commitments:  The law firm I work for has been pretty understanding about the procedure and time I will need to take to rehabilitate this injury.  

I should add that I am likely in the category of people who technically fall within the category of "purely elective" when it comes to this surgery although it never felt that way for me.  What I mean is that pre-surgery I had a pretty decent activity level.  Days before surgery I "ran" four miles.  (The quotes around the word ran are intentional as I would not want to overstate what this looked like).  I was working out at least 4-5 days per week.  I could complete relatively challenging HIIT workouts and I was doing challenging pilates workouts at Studio Lagree.  Side note - if you have not tried the megaformer at Studio Lagree, do it:  http://studiolagree.com.  Chicagoans, you're welcome.

Studio Lagree is THE spot to go to in Chicago for reformer pilates.  The classes are so challenging (in a good way) and are perfect for anyone with a knee injury because they are non-impact.

However, I was not able to do the main thing I wanted to do:  tennis.  But adding to that was the fact that some routine daily tasks were becoming increasingly more difficult.  For example, walking down the stairs to the subway to work hurt.  And, if I was wearing heels - ugh.  Getting into an uber/cab was difficult, trying to get cleaning supplies out of a low shelf hurt and getting up off the floor was the worst.  While my desire to play tennis overrode every other consideration, the fact of the matter was that this injury began to affect many aspects of my daily life and it was only going to get worse.  

In theory I could have continued my activity level and life but it was not what I wanted for myself and I was really not happy about it.  While going to pilates was fun, I missed tennis on a daily basis and was tired of having to mentally prepare each time I encountered a flight of stairs.  So, I scheduled surgery and never thought twice about it.