Hi all, I'm a 21 year old female and first injured my knee in 2009 while playing basketball. I completely ruptured my ACL and underwent an ACL reconstruction in march 2010, they also removed about 1/3 of my cartilage. After undergoing physio etc I was still experiencing pain in the back of my knee on the lateral side and had difficulty bending and straightening me knee. I returned back to my surgeon and his only suggestion was to perform an arthroscope. I had this done in December 2010 and they removed half of my remaining cartilage, however it didn't seem to help the problem at all. I continued physio but still no improvements so went for a second opinion to another specialist. They instructed me to rest and go back to the basics, no weight bearing etc but the didn't help, their next suggestion was to have another arthroscope however I decided against it at the time as they couldn't guarantee it would fix anything an my knee had already been through a lot of stress in a short amount of time.
My goal all along has been to try and return to netball so I decided I would just give it a shot and see how my knee coped. I began training about 2 months ago and was able to ignore the pain and was starting to feel confident, however about 6 weeks ago I started experiencing pain on the medial side of my knee, around the knee cap, which was something I had not experienced before. I was unable to run without experiencing sharp pain and also experienced pain while walking. I returned to the specialist and again they could only suggest an arthroscope but don't really recommend it because of what my knee has already gone through. My knee is still very sore and swells quite regularly.

I am just wondering if anyone out there has experienced anything similar and may have any advice, particularly on whether to go ahead with this third surgery or is there anything else I should try? I would still love to be able to play netball however I am beginning to realize this may not happen again.