I am in the camp of doing everything I can do to avoid a knee replacement so I would definitely try alternatives. I don’t know if financially you can afford out-of-pocket but eight weeks ago I had an MFAT injection. They harvest fat and then inject that into the infected joint. I am amazed at my progress so far. I started playing pickle ball at four weeks. I was bone on bone that one caveat is that you have to be in relatively good shape for your body to process the fat. From what I read here and the anecdotal evidence from the people I play pickle ball with it seems like 60% of the people are very happy 25% of the people are OK and 15% of the people are very sorry they had a replacement. Good luck with your decision