I’ve always had problems with my knees -I was originally diagnosed with patellar tendinitis. After a second opinion, we realized it was much worse than I expected. The plan was to have a procedure done to regrow the cartilage in my bone in June of 2022. Unfortunately during a state playoff basketball game, I tore my meniscus. I had my first surgery in March of 2022 and then I found out my OCD lesion was a lot worse than we expected. We had to find a different doctor to perform a cartilage replacement, which wasn’t easy. We were lucky to find Dr. Alaia. The unlucky part, was that in addition to the OCD lesion, my alignment was way off, which needed to be corrected. That added to the surgery and the recovery time, and when I heard “nine months to a year”, it was like my soul left my body and I just screamed. It was one of the hardest things I’ve ever heard. Not only was the pain significant throughout the recovery time but there were so many mental health problems that came along with being out of sport for that long. The day I came back from my injury was like nothing I could describe. It was just awesome, and I am so thankful for my recovery time being so much shorter than expected. Dr. Alaia is not only a brilliant surgeon, he is an amazing person. I will forever be grateful to him.
