Steve I take it they can't do the surgery orthoscopicly? With the scoped forms of repair recovery time is much faster. Sorry you have to live with that kind of pain. I had to hobble around work for a year and a half before the insurance companies agreed to a MRI of my knee. Then it was Oh you haave a bilateral tear in your miniscus, that needs to be operated on! That was a scoped procedure, and healed in about 3-4 weeks.