Hi Josh, I wanted to add my personal story with a medial meniscus tear and subsequent “partial medial meniscectomy”. I remember being injured with a tear in my knee from soccer and obsessively reading stories about rehab, recovery, and everything in between and appreciated folks who shared. So if it’s helpful, here is one more story to find and compare with your own situation (obviously this is not medical advice!)
I tore my medial meniscus in my right knee back in 2014 (I was 32) playing indoor soccer; really common injury in sports with pivoting like soccer and basketball. It took me a while to get the MRI and see a surgeon, but once they had the information it was pretty clear that my tear wouldn’t heal based on where it was located (no blood flow to that part of the mensicus) and if I wanted to play soccer or snowboard again, I would need to have the damaged flap of cartilage trimmed out. One tip I would have if you can be flexible – when scheduling your surgery, ask to get on the “cancellation list”! – this moved my surgery up from something like 4-5 months out to getting it done within 10 days of seeing the surgeon because someone cancelled and I was able to tell work I was taking a week off. It literally saved my season of winter sports moving my surgery date up to October instead of something like February or March. And I think most of us over the age of 30 start appreciating that we only have so many epic powder days left. 🙂
So the day of surgery, I opted to get put under so I had to do some pre-op things for that but the actual experience was… I don’t want to be too flippant about it but it was almost like going to the dentist except for the hospital gown. I was the last surgery of the day for the orthopedist probably because of the cancellation and I asked him how many surgeries he’d done that day and I don’t recall exactly but it was like more than 5 and he apologized because the last patient had some additional damage to their ACL or something that took longer than expected. So while knee surgery is sort of a huge life event for most of us, I got the vibe it was just another day in the office for the surgeon (and his excellent team). That might be reassuring… or not, since who doesn’t have a bad day in the office once in a while? kind of like watching the procedure on youtube. Not sure if that made me feel better or worse! Ha!
They put me under and I woke up groggy a few hours later with some good meds for a few days. I think I was at the hospital for less than 10 hours total. I recall the surgeon prescribed PT for me but basically said “you won’t need it – functionally you’ll be good to go right after this surgery but pain will prevent you from doing too much until the swelling goes down” The recovery time for me was crutching around immediately; standing and a few steps within a week, walking at around two weeks; and then just progressively more activity as the swelling went down and mobility returned to my knee. I recall within three months I was back to running and playing soccer and I was definitely able to get some shredding in that season. 2-3 weeks I think I was biking but not running.
It’s been a few years now and I’m thankful that I’ve been able to stay as active as I was before the surgery with no negative functional impacts. Pivoting, deep squats, nothing is really a problem. Long term though, I will say that I notice the difference in my right knee. After long days in the mountains, it tends to get sore, and every once in a while I overdo it with something like downhill running on pavement and my knee will be sore for weeks or in one case, months before the pain goes away. I do wonder if the hundreds of miles of running and training is setting me up for arthritis earlier than I would otherwise; but I rationalize it as the price for living a very active life.
So anyway, the short version is that the recovery is super fast in general, but I think 2-3 weeks might be a bit optimistic for full activity. I also echo the tip of getting your bike tuned up and ready to go – you’ll be able to do that first as your ROM improves.
