I thought I would document my recent road to recovery from knee surgery and hope it helps anyone going through the same.
It all started when I was growing up, I think I was born with my knee cap out of alignment, having a few issues when I was younger from always walking the outside of my shoes down to being picked up as having knock knees and bow legs as well as clicky hips! All was good until I was playing squash at 16 and my first big twist happened when my knee dislocated. After healing, I carried on at school with hockey, netball and cross country. When I left school I used to go to the gym most days and after moving to London in my early 20s, I began taking part in Triathlon.
Phil and I took over the shop in 2003 and we became mountain and road cyclists as well as keeping fit in the gym, swimming and running. I twisted again in my 20s coming down from running at the Beacon and again in my 30s when I was jumping over a stream on the fell. In amongst these knock backs I ran several marathons and half marathons, took part in 6 Ironman events as well as a number of local ones. My last Ironman was a half distance in 2024 and I ended up power walking the run element because of my knee. After that, I gave up running but continued to enjoy the gym, swimming mainly outdoors in my favourite place - Ullswater as well as loads of cycling, mainly with friends on the shop rides.
At the end of 2024 and into 2025 I started to suffer pain when cycling, any pressure on climbing resulted in a nasty click as well as quite a bit of discomfort. That was when I knew enough was enough! I know I'm no a Spring Chicken, but I'm certainly not ready to hobble into old age! I went to see Jemma at Absolute Physio and she said if she was unable to help me in 12 weeks, intervention would be the only option. 8 weeks in we both admitted defeat and I was referred to a specialist. Mr Elson did the surgery for me at the end of September 2025.
This is me a couple of hours after surgery, waiting to be allowed to go home!
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Recovery has not been straight forward and despite being religious with the physio, I was always in pain and my leg remained stiff, swollen and sore, aggravating every time I did anything rehab related. On returning to my Surgeon at the 6 month stage, he sadly informed me that I was still riddled with arthritis and likely had bone on bone irritation so despite his best efforts in realigning my knee and pinning it into a better position, I would likely need a replacement but I am too young.... the ONLY time to be offended by being too young nowadays haha.
Anyway.... Jemma, my physio at Absolute wasn't giving up on me and suggested we might try a relatively new treatment to her practice, which is a hyaluronic acid injection directly behind my knee cap. I believe it's designed to lubricate the gap between my knee joint and my knee cap, to cushion things enough to remove that bone on bone pain. My muscles have suffered a lot of wastage due to not being fired up so I think this was compounding the problem as I wasn't strong enough to take the pressure off my joint. I always wanted thin legs, until I got one! Urgh.
I've since had a second injection as the first gave me relief for about 5 months. There are no guidelines or a limit to how many you can have and I don't feel I need to suffer unnecessarily so injection two went in about a month ago. This is a more viscous gel which is supposed to last longer. The injection was more painful and the recovery time was longer, I would say about 3 / 4 weeks. However, I feel like it is giving me a greater cushion and I noticed when I was cycling last week that for the first time in about 3 years, I was totally 100% pain free! It also dawned on me when walking to and from work last week, that I am now completely pain free - yipee! At this point I am confident that the surgery has been beneficial and that Jemma Donald of Absolute Physio has enabled me to get back to doing everything I should be able to do. It's been almost14 months and I am doing everything apart from running at the moment, although once I've got a bit more muscle tone, I believe I will be able to do that too.... I had better, I've signed up for 70.3 Ironman Portugal in 2027!
