A decade of knee pain since age 8 — and the first day she could remember being pain-free.

I remember going to a birthday party that was ice skating, and I couldn't participate. My knees couldn't withstand the demands of the ice, and I couldn't do the gliding motion of the skates. So I had to sit there — like I did a lot when I was younger — and just watch a lot of kids do the things that I wanted to do. A lot of people would think, well, it's just ice skating. But when you're younger and it's the wintertime, everybody goes ice skating every other weekend. My condition started when I was 8. It's called osteochondritis dissecans. I'd be on the soccer field, and one day I came off when I was 8 years old and I looked at my mom and I said, my knees hurt. I was like, I can't, I can't do this anymore. As I got older I just played through it because I loved the sport so much and I didn't want to miss out. At about 12 years old we came to HSS, and I saw another doctor here who performed a surgery called a microfracture — where they drilled tiny little holes in your patella and the surrounding bones and trick the body into thinking there's an injury so that blood will go and help heal the issue. That bought me a lot of time and a lot of pain-free moments. But when I got to 10th grade, the pain was coming back. I was like, I just I just can't do this. So I kept going. Beginning of my freshman year of college I went back to that doctor who did my surgery and I said, you know, you did wonders for me — you helped me be a kid at certain points — but the pain is just coming back, and I don't know what to do. Gianna was referred to me by a friend and colleague here at HSS who's a pediatric orthopedic surgeon. She was 18 at the time. This was over a year ago. She had pain — she said for as long as she could remember. She grew up with the pain. We ended up doing a cartilage transplant for her, and at the same time repairing some of the bony changes that had happened. Recovery time — I was non-weight-bearing for a good six weeks, so it was hard. I think it's important for a lot of people to know that recovery is just a piece of a lifetime that you can have without that pain. At the five-and-a-half-week post-op time I already felt a difference. I already knew that this pain was not going to last long. Since I was put in my second brace and it gave me more mobility, I went in the gym every day even on crutches and I was able to lose 43 pounds. He definitely gave me my life back, for sure. She came back and she said, this is literally the first time as long as I can remember that I don't have any pain. And that's the greatest thing — someone who grew up with this pain, you want to find your answer. Anybody with a chronic situation knows that sometimes there is no quick fix. I learned that very quickly. But I asked Dr. Gomoll at the first appointment, I said, is this going to be my answer? Am I going to be done? Is this going to be my endgame? And he said, well, it all depends on your definition of success. I said, I just want to be active without having pain. I want to be able to walk up that flight of steps without having to take a break in between at 18 years old. He looked at me and he said, well, if that's your definition of success, that's what we're going to try and reach. He never gave me a false impression of what the surgery was going to be. It didn't turn out that way — exactly what he said was going to happen and how I should feel is exactly what happened.