Post-op pain in m. peroneus

Hello,

February 18th 2007, my boyfriend got a knee injury by playing soccer

Diagnose
· Both crossligaments were torn
· Broken medial meniscus
· A hole in his joint-cartiladge as big as a quarter on his medial femur condyl
The same week (February 21st) he had surgery in UZ Ghent (Belgium) and they
· Took healthy chondrocytes out of his knee to have them grow
· Stitching of his meniscus
· Clean up
The chondrocytes were cultured for 5 weeks and March 28th he has his second surgery
· Fix the crossligaments (with a tendon from his m. quadriceps)
· Again: stitching of his meniscus
· Transplant of the chondrocytes and covering with a membrane
He has had physiotherapy an hour every day, since the injury. And we also had a device called a "Kinetec" which he used for several hours a day (it's a device that bends and stretches your knee)
But after half a year he still had problems bending, because he could net bend his knee any further than 90 degrees. He could do a lot though, he could walk almost normally, he could ride a bike, drive a car etc. Not very long, but he could.

The surgeon didn't dare to force the knee any further, because he was afraid to damage the cartiladge and he decided to have another surgery. His diagnose was that there was some scartissue that caused the obstruction.

This surgery happened about 3 weeks ago (August 8th) and they
· Cleaned up the scartissue
· (Finally) took out the meniscus
· Check on the new cartiladge (which was good, just a little slow in growth
Ok, so far the recent medical history

Now, ever since his first surgery my boyfriend had a pain in a certain area of his shin. At first we thought it was the constant pressure of the brace he had to wear 24/7 (for about 2 months). And that was also the thought of the surgeon.

But even weeks after he had worn his brace for the last time, the pain was terrible. It is located at the position of the m. peroneus tertius or m. tibialis. We asked the surgeon again, but he did not have a satisfying answer for us.

He also asked his physiotherapist, but they had (and still have) no clue what might cause this sever pain. They guessed that the muscle shrunk, because of the long immobilisation, but stretching or their normal therapy for that does not help a bit.

At this point it is so bad, that my boyfriend cannot sleep anymore due to the pain, he cannot wear his brace at night and even painkillers bring no relieve. He's thinking about taking some muscle relaxors, just to escape the pain for a little bit.

Our surgeon is a pretty busy man. The weeks before the surgery he spend his time in the US and now he's in France for a couple of weeks, so he is very hard to reach. So that's why I put my question up here.

His anyone ANY idea
· what this pain might be?
· what we/physiotherapist can do about it?
· what the best short term solution is for the pain?
I hope someone can help us

Sincerly,
Kimry Sipma