dug 
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Well, in the end, the damage to the knee was worse than the scans had suggested and the knee arthroscopy took a lot longer than planned.
I had apparently damaged the front of the knee joint by overdoing it on staircases and the overall state of the cartilage and meniscus was pretty poor. The meniscus tear had a horizontal element which was unseen in the MRI scan and took a lot longer to trim.
The primary meniscus tear was a sudden incident. I was behind third base at a TMW softball game and was determined to not let the side down. I never did catch any balls but the stop-start without warm-up took care of the cartilage. Talk about stupid boy, not only was the accident avoidable, but I was busy at work and never took the knee to the doc. I had company health insurance at the time and could have had the whole thing sorted (retro-kicking myself as I write this grrr).
I’m guessing the damaging stair action might have been getting very pissed and lugging an entire photoshoot’s worth of lighting and camera gear up to the top of the Positano cliffs (in a oner) from down on the seafront. Lugging Sven’s camera gear up to the top-floor studio at Jubilee Place for a year probably didn’t help either…
Needless to say, the op was considerably more expensive than I had planned for. Basically, without health insurance and having lost mobility (I had been limping for three weeks) I needed to get it sorted very quickly. As well as the obvious need for going to work, I didn’t want the damage to reduce my future mobility and ability to play with CU-1 and CU-2.
The major onset of pain was triggered by teaching CU-1 to skateboard. We’d been looking at videos of Tony Alva grinding pools and planning a trip to North London’s three decent skateparks. The thought of not being able to share this with her was a real blow:-(
In any case, I’m crossing my fingers that with only three weeks between re-injury and op, I’ve managed to not grind or scratch the knee too much…