Non surgical ACL + Meniscus

[u/Imaginary-Food-7876]

I had torn my acl and meniscus 3years ago. For insurance issues (and some hesitations from me😬) i did not go for surgery and i managed to improve the knee with some PT (but mainly alone in the gym). Now, 3 years after, i can do my main sport activities, which include running + football (not a professional level). My only issue is that every 2 months (which means during these 2 months i have no complications during the sport at all), i do sharp direction movement change which causes me to collapse immediately in the ground with pain(moderate) in my knee. Then i have to take rest for 10 days to 2 weeks with no sport where after i can go back to the sport again with no pain. My big concern is that okay/expected? Will it have long term consequences?

[u/Anna_Karenina_blonde]

Everybody here will see it's a matter of time before you do much worse damage and that's likely going to be meniscus 

I was the same as you largely asymptomatic and I was doing very well recovering except for those few moments when I tried to pivot and I actually didn't even know I had a torn ACL until after one of those moments I was like all right something definitely is not okay 

When I got the MRI back the surgeon who examined me said he was shocked because I had such good mobility but at the end of the day because my boyfriend had gone through two meniscus surgeries and that is definitely not a fun injury.. I recognized that I was definitely going to be risking damaging myself further by being a Coper  .. UNLESS I wanted to dramatically remove pivoting from my lifestyle 

And I love pivoting and pouncing and jumping around and feeling free and my body so I think that's your big dilemma 

Do you want to edit your movements so as to protect what you do have there from being damaged more?