Adam Moore Has A Torn Meniscus

but still pretty bad.

Tore the left on in 2005.

Hooray for Miguel Olivo I guess.

Neither has ever fully recovered. It could just be a genetic weakness on my father’s side of the family (my knees aren’t so hot either, sometimes…), but the surgery to correct was only part of the battle. The recovery took more than eight weeks and that was before they could use them to 100% strength. Before that, they couldn’t do any kind of strenuous activity that would allow a baseball player to stay in shape.

Moore’s going to be out a while.

I’m currently rehabbing from a tibial spine fracture, which is in many ways a lot like an ACL tear – it just means the piece of bone connecting to ACL snapped under the load before the ACL did. As a result, I’ve been doing a lot of research on the various types of knee injuries and what the recoveries look like.

Just like Typical Idiot Fan says, people who tear their meniscii often don’t get back to complete 100% function, and the rehab and the recovery are much more difficult than the surgery itself. Lots of muscle simply turns itself off after the surgery and after any immobilization. The initial battle is to simply regain a functional range of motion and to retrain the muscles to work. Gaining enough stability and strength to even walk normally takes weeks. I’m five weeks post-surgery on an injury and surgery that by all accounts is less traumatic, but with a similar rehab arc, and I can only bend my knee 90 degrees, with cold-sweat-producing pain when I do it. I can’t even imagine getting into a catching stance. Obviously Adam is young, a professional athlete, and has some highly focused supervision, so long-term he’ll probably be fine, but at least based on what I’ve learned, this is going to take some time for him to get right. Hopefully I’m blinded by my own anecdote and this will be much less serious than I thought.

But if not … goddamn it. And goddamn you, Scrappy and Facepalm Richie Sexson, for all that you represent.

Brandon Roy played basketball at a high level after three meniscus surgeries, though he did tear what remained of his right meniscus last spring and hasn’t recovered at all.

There’s two ways to operate on it: to remove, or to repair. From what I understand, removal is the usual solution, but a 6-8 week timeline makes me wonder if they’re attempting to repair it. Either way, the meniscus is a buffer. Without it, the cartilage begins to wear, which can eventually result in bone-on-bone, making the knee arthritic. That’s a pretty far way off, and it’s generally a partial removal anyway. Multiple tears of the same meniscus is a big issue.

Here’s a good breakdown of long-term meniscus impact.

First let me say I’m not a doctor, nor a professional athlete, but I did a TON of research on this and I was a high level amateur when this happened to me.

I had a really bad set of tears in my Meniscus. I got them while doing roadwork when I was boxing competitively and was able to continue boxing (and making them worse) for some time before my knee started locking. I was unable to bend my knee past 90 degrees until some months after the second surgery.

The first surgery I had was a Meniscus repair and partial removal. This is where they go in, try to mend what can be mended and remove any loose bodies or flaps that need to be removed. This surgery was more in the months range or recovery because you have to give the mend time to catch. This is also a fairly low success rate surgery (50%) because of the paucity of blood flow to the Meniscus in general, and specifically to certain parts of it. In my case I was not one of the success stories even with extensive rehab and conditioning. What followed was a long long series of rehabs, drainings and frustration.

Nine months after the first surgery I had the second which was a partial removal. This is just a shaving down of loose Meniscus, much like trimming your fingernails or a hangnail, only inside your knee. I literally walked out of the hospital after this surgery, was able to resume most activities within 3 weeks and was boxing in just over a month.

Now like I said, I’m no professional athlete, let alone a catcher who has to squat all day, nor am I a doctor, but I’d bet they go with a removal here. You have a lot of Meniscus to play with, the recovery time and surgery damage isn’t as bad and the success rate is better. That being said if he has something horrific or something that can be repaired they could go for the repair, but that would probably take a lot longer to heal and may not work.

Also surgery for professional athletes is more advanced than what I had access too, though my doctor had personally performed surgery on Roger Clemens in the past. They could get around some of the blood flow issues by perhaps injecting blood like they did with A-rod’s hip labrum, or some other surgical magic that costs lots of money and you and I don’t have access to.

I think this is unlikely to impact Moore’s long term future as a catcher much, and it shouldn’t affect him as an athlete in general unless its very very bad and they have to remove a lot of tissue. Anyway, that’s the two cents of someone who has been through it and studied it intensely at the time.

Come on, Adam. Shake it off. I mean, Olivo’s starting because he passed a kidney stone and still caught the next inning.

94% of the population suffers from weak stomachs and bad knees. And we thought obesity was a problem.

I have nothing more to add

the silver lining is that a player’s injury is SO sever that they’ll be out for at least two months.