Arthritis

So I visited my new primary care physician yesterday, a very nice young woman of South Asian descent. Unfortunately she is -- like all PCPs these days -- harried by the system and pressed for time, which drives home the point that we are all ultimately our own doctors, the managers and guardians of our own health. But in half an hour she did an admirable job in getting up to speed on where I was on a broad range of health issues, despite the fact that my health records had not been updated in her system (I should have had them faxed weeks earlier instead of one week, admittedly my bad).

One thing we did get done was I some xrays of my problem knee, which discovered some arthritis, or " Mild tricompartmental, medial compartment predominant, left knee osteoarthrosis." More precisely even, 

"LEFT knee: No acute fracture or dislocation. Tricompartmental osteophytosis with tibial spine spurring. Mild medial tibiofemoral joint space narrowing. No joint effusion.

RIGHT knee: Limited views of the right knee demonstrate tricompartmental osteophytosis with tibial spine spurring. Minimal medial femorotibial compartment joint space narrowing. No acute fracture or dislocation.

Honestly I'm not sure what it all means or what I do going forward. It sounds less bad than a torn miniscus or patellar tendinitis, AKA "jumper's knee", which is what I thought must be going on. I will have to figure this out talking to friends and neighbors who are doctors. Certainly I must consider myself fortunate to have gone this far in life without an ACL tear.