While not encouraging you to get surgery for your knee: I don't know much about this stuff, but isn't that sort of repair done using keyhole surgery these days? It'd take ages to recover though, tendons take ages to heal. An injury somewhere inside my right knee I got at the end of the 80s still bugs me (it had a violent disagreement with a BMW bonnet while the rest of me flew over the car, upon which my bike left dents). The knee swelled up, but they they couldn't find a tear using scans. Years later, a physio told me while administering ultrasonic shocks to my knee that at some point, having failed healing, the body gives up and the injury becomes chronic (hence the ultrasonic shocks). Cycling became less painful after regular slow jogging (slower than fast walking and higher impact, but not the higher impact of normal jogging)... so for me at least, slow jogging has improved matters, my theory is slow jogging delivering shocks prompted the immune system to attempt repair again - but that's my experience and non-medical theory about my knee. After about two years of slow jogging, I don't experience knee pain cycling.
