- December 06, 2018 My name is Mark Wilson, and I have been a professional golfer on the PGA TOUR for 14 years. I felt pain in my right knee in April 2015 after doing 40 yard dashes (bad idea at 41 years of age!) and then it worsened after a long session of full court basketball in late November. Golf swings hurt enough where I wouldn’t have played a tournament at that time (thankfully it was the off season). It was time for an MRI and it revealed a small meniscus tear. Two well respected doctors examined me and said surgery is the only option to get rid of the pain. Dr. Brian Cole had a different approach of giving me a cortisone shot in my knee. He wanted to treat the symptom, not the MRI picture. If I didn’t respond to the cortisone shot in the following ten days, then surgery would make sense, but he certainly hoped to help me avoid surgery. Well, twelve hours after the shot, the pain went down to almost nothing. I didn’t feel any pain as I returned to the golf course in 2016 without missing a tournament. I am now 100 days removed from the shot and my right leg feels great. I haven’t felt any pain or weakness since the shot. I strongly urge anyone that has been told that surgery is the only option for a meniscus tear to hear what Dr. Cole has to say about this less invasive treatment. Thanks to Dr. Cole, I could get back to competition without the risks and down-time associated with surgery.
