Lateral meniscal cyst

I went to the orthopedic surgeon today and he told me more about my meniscus issue.
- if I can bear the pain there is not much need to get surgery on my meniscus tear.  The damage has been done.  Get it fixed if I want to do more sports and will irritate it by using it a ton.
- the hard bump forming to the side of my knee is a cyst that has been forming for a while.  Most likely before I injured my knee real bad on April 1, I had smaller tears in my meniscus which have been leaking  into the cyst.  Typically cysts this size do not form so quickly.
- the doc would often go ahead and do surgery without an mri in a torn mri situation.  However with the cyst,  they would like to get a better overall look through an mri.
-  I mentioned that I am price concious and the doc recommended treasure valley hospital as the best place to get an mri for price.  However I had already called around and it cost about 1200 at treasure valley when I pay cash. However it only cost 600 cash through imaging center of idaho. I mentioned that it is much cheaper through ICI and he said that would be fine. The interesting this here is that I had to fill out paperwork before the appointment which said that I acknowledge that many of the providers have ownership in treasure valley hospital and that I acknowledge that I have other options as weeks.  So that means that (even though they are trying to be careful about not recommending the hospital they own) some how he still felt justified in recommending TV as a cheaper alternative even though it was not.
- the limited range and tightness I notice is from the cyst and swelling. (I was worried that the limited range was damage to something inside which wasn't healing)
- the brace I was wearing for the first couple of weeks was only partially important.  I told him that I knew my knee was solid and it wasn't going to hyper extend but when I wore the brace it gave me confidence that it would not.  He said that was normal and due to "propreoception"  which is the feeling that you have about how your muscles are reacting.  And with my knee being injured the nerves were not sensitive enough, the pressure from the brace increase my nerve ' ability to report back to my brain where my knee position was.