beforehand...is that legal? I'm just extremely, extremely upset with how this has turned out and I need advice on what to do.

By the way - I'm a 25 year old woman, and this all began when I was around 21-22.

I tore my ACL in August of 2007. After the initial x-ray I was told it was a sprained knee. I've done that one other time and it felt totally different, I didn't believe them, but they insisted. A month later they called back and said it was actually a torn ACL, come in right away, surgery was scheduled blah blah. We only discussed ACL reconstruction. That was it. I was told it would be a 1.5 hour surgery, only ACL reconstruction, and I'd be on crutches for 2 weeks. I woke up from the surgery and the only thing I remember from the rest of that day is the doctor sitting by my bed saying that they found a chunk of cartilage missing, so he performed microfracture. It was a 3 hour surgery, and I'm not allowed to put ANY pressure on it for 6 weeks.

I had no idea what microfracture was. I went home and researched, and after a week or so, I decided that if he would have spoken to me about it beforehand, I would NOT have given him permission to do it. The statistics and experiences I read about led to me believe it was not something that would have been for me.

Therapy comes along, I do pretty well but eventually hit a plateau. I did my 2 or 3 months of therapy like he suggested, and then I still tried to do things on my own. Eventually everything started hurting and I couldn't do it. I know the difference between pain that you can eventually push through and it will disappear, and just straight, real pain. I have a LOT of real pain now. It's January 2011, and I have not been able to run or jog since August 12, 2007, I can't do stairs comfortably, I can never play sports again (my doctor told me that himself and I tried to prove him wrong but it's not working very well), and a ton of other things. Try and do this movement: stand on one leg, bend your knee and drop a couple inches, then raise back up. I can NOT do this movement. This is why I can't run, do stairs, none of that.

Before all of this happened, I was the biggest jock ever. I played fast pitch and slow pitch softball, volleyball, basketball, did gymnastics, ice skated, swam, played soccer, ran track...

and now I'm 25 and can't do shit. I've also gained some weight because exercise was what was keeping me in shape. Now I exercise for about 2 weeks and think I'm doing okay, then one day it starts hurting so bad I can't even walk, and I'm done for a couple months.

I don't know what the hell to do because like I said - I'm 25 YEARS OLD. This should NOT be happening to someone who has never had one sports injury or broken bone or twisted ankle or ANYTHING (besides a sprained knee in 2003 for a month) and played every sport in the world. I'm absolutely sick to my stomach every time I think about this, and I am livid at my doctor for doing the surgery. I would have NOT let him do it.

What am I supposed to do? Can I sue him? How do I heal? I've seen another doctor within the past 2 years and he wanted me to do therapy for 6 weeks then have another surgery. I'm terrified he's going to do the same thing or ruin me even more.