The hardest half is behind me

A couple days ago was the 3 month mark, and if I go along like an average person, that means I am halfway there. As far as the ACL goes nothing new since last time. I'm at that plateau stage where once I was able to start walking normally, progress is hard to see.

ROM is complete, and I can press down on my folded leg without pain. I guess the only noticeable thing is that after long walks it gets pretty sore and the muscle gives out once in a while but that's just weakness in the quad.

Recently I have started working out again and added some quad workout to my daily routines and its been pretty great. Knees feeling a lot stronger. I also started swimming which is awesome exercise because of the low impact on the knee. Jogging will come in a few weeks I believe, I see my orthopedic surgeon again in 12 days and am aiming for a clear to jog.

As a tip to those who are going through this, workout your quad insanely, then use a foam roller. Those things may hurt like hell when being used, but it truly relaxes all the muscle knots after just 10-15minutes.

Almost halfway?

In about a week or so it will be 3 month post op which means I'm halfway to the expected full recovery!

Nothing really new to report, been going to therapy about once every two weeks now (trying to conserve those insurance visits). I walk normal to the untrained eye, but the therapists can tell my hip is weak when I take a step. I am working on hip and hamstring strength mainly.

The graft is holding up pretty nicely except the last 2 times I lost my balance and was forced to bear a lot of weight on my right leg there was a sharp pain but I guess that is natural.

I can smell the finish line!

Little trip up..

Over two months out of surgery now and today was a bad day. I was just walking around a lot this weekend so my quad was very sore, but earlier I banged my knee really hard against something and my knee has felt stiff and slightly painful ever since.

I don't know if that is just the soreness or if I had loosened/re-tore my acl but this worries me a great deal as another tear would set me back at least another 8 or 9 months.

I will see my PT this Friday and ask about it but until then I'll just have to sit here and see if the soreness and stiffness go down.

Feeling good at 7 and a half weeks

By this point I am walking pretty much normally. There is still a limp if I'm walking downhill thought simply because that puts a lot of pressure on my quad muscles to push myself back from falling forward. The biggest problem now is how all the muscle on my right leg has atrophied away. Gotta hit that gym hard in the summer to get it back to normal before the next school year.

PT is getting a little better now that I am no longer just stretching and have started strength exercises. Currently I am doing the exercise bike, one legged calf-raises, leg press, and that's about it. I want to start squatting on my own but I may need PT approval for that.

I saw my orthopedic surgeon 4 days ago and he says I am healing quite well and if I don't do anything stupid I should be jogging in about a month. Lets hope it works out, I haven't jogged in almost 3 months now..

Week 5 quick update

So this is week 5 post op for me. Or..5 and a half weeks. But nothing much in the last week or so, I haven't been to PT in like 2 weeks so I have no idea where I should be.

I am completely off the crutches, and can walk close to a normal speed now. Downstairs are still hard without a handrail but upstairs is fine. I haven't been doing any exercise but walking..no stretching either. But I feel my ROM has gone up..can bend it pretty far now.

Overall, it's beginning to get hardly noticeable, this is great!

Close to 4 weeks out - things almost normal

It has been a while since my last update but school has really been a pain especially with mobility issues.

But as of today I am 2 days short of 4 weeks since my surgery. One week ago I went to see my doctor for a check up and asked him a bunch of questions. Initially he stated that I should be on crutches for 6 weeks but when I asked him if I could get on a more aggressive rehab plan he said it was just a suggestion and in the end it is up to me. So 2 days ago I finally ditched the crutches. I am walking quite a bit slower than with the crutch, but it feels good to be able to use both hands in carrying things when I walk around.

What I find tough is walking down the stairs. Up is still fine, but if I walk down the stairs leading with my good leg, it becomes impossible. Too much pressure on my new ACL I guess.

I stopped going to PT twice a week because I am on a limited number of visits from my insurance. I now go in once a week and the last one was really good. It was a PT that I haven't seen before and he did a really good job in helping me get my ROM and giving me exercises. With the doctor's 6 week partial weight bearing orders off, I was finally started on the bike. It was a really good warm up to get my flexion up. Last friday I was up to 130 degrees flexion! My other leg gets around 140 so it's pretty close now. One thing I worry about is the stiffness, it takes a lot of warm up and stretching to get to 130, and I hope that it will come more easily and naturally soon.

I still get a sharp pain near my kneecap when I do quad sets (flexing my right quad and holding it). Doctor and PT simply wave it off and say I just had surgery it's normal.

Goals for this week..getting my knee to stop buckling while walking normally, work on stiffness in the knee, get the knots out of my calf, work on quad strength.

Don't have that much more expectation for my ROM because the last 10 degrees will probably come over the span of a few weeks so there's nothing much to measure there anymore.

Overall, starting to live the normal life again, hopefully I will walk unnoticably different from anyone else within the next 2 weeks.

2 weeks out!

So its officially 2 weeks out since I had my operation and unless I am moving around, I don't even notice my bad knee at this point. I can freely bend and extend it with my quad and hamstring when I sit on the bed (obviously not all the way though).

I had PT yesterday and nothing much new to report..extension and flexion are about the same as last week. I haven't been icing as much anymore so the swelling is still around. The PT did some ultra sound to relieve some swelling and massaged my IT band as well. She said that my IT band was really tight and was keeping my from flexing my quad all the way to do 0 degree locked out leg extensions. It felt a lot better after the PT session and now I can even walk up stairs and on flat ground without my crutch although I keep it around since the doctor says I should.

Feeling pretty good now even though the recovery rate has kind of plateaued.

9 days post op

Today was my third PT session and it went really well. They were surprised to see me walk in with 1 crutch.

They had me stretch my knee a little both ways and the official measurements are 1 degree extension and 110 degrees flexion. 110!!! That's a big improvement since the 95 of 3 days ago so I am really happy. I guess I am still 1 degree away from full extension but that's fine for now.

I did some single leg leg lifts, side leg lifts, and leg lifts on my stomach. Then got iced down for 10 minutes, quick PT session.

I am almost ready to go crutchless but the doctor said I should be on 2 crutches for 6 weeks and the PTs are finding it kind of weird too, it seems way too long. They can't even start me on harder weight bearing exercises because of the doctor's orders. I will call him Monday and try to get a more aggressive rehab protocol.

That's all for today.

6 Days post op - 2nd rehab

Today I am almost a week into my recovery process and it is feeling much better. I saw the doctor yesterday and he showed me some pictures and walked me through some stuff. I asked him some questions and here was the final conclusion. I can now start to bear weight as I am comfortable with. I no longer need the brace but should crutch for 6 weeks. I think he is very conservative with that just because most people I hear get off crutches within 2, so I am going to try after 2 or 3 weeks. I will see him again in May.

I also had my PT appointment today with another pt who was much more knowledgeable which made things work a lot faster and better. One exercise she showed me was to lay on the edge of my bed with my hurt leg on the wall and just let my foot slide down to bend my knee as far as it can go. This one is a bit painful but will improve my flexion a lot. I have been stretching a little bit too so my extension got better today, I was pretty much at 0 degrees. I have 95 degrees flexion, and when I said 100 last week I was mistaken, I meant to say 100 on the other side which meant around 80 degrees worth of flexion. I hope I can get my knee to bend all the way pretty soon.

Another thing I need to work on is quad control and muscle memory. It seems the shock of the surgery has caused my quad to stop working correctly..And because I haven't used it in a few days, the quad memory of the action it takes to take a step is starting to go away, so I need to get that back.

My goals for next week are to be able to do a straight leg lift laying on my back and perhaps walk a bit off of crutches.

2 Days post op - first rehab session

A lot has gone by since my last post in just 2 days. The first day is probably going to be the worst day of this entire recovery process, the femural nerve block wore off and I was on so many painkillers that I was in and out of consciousness for almost 20 hours.

The painkillers were messing with me too much (completely destroyed my appetite) so I just quit them about 24 hours ago. This made standing up a huge problem because the blood would rush down to my knee and this would cause pretty significant pain. I woke up this morning ready to go into rehab, had a slice of toast which was all I could stomach, and saw the therapist. She simply did some measurements of my ROM (range of motion) and I have -5 degrees extension and less than 100 degrees flexion..which isn't all that great but after all it is only day 2. I felt this therapist was a bit young and inexperienced which makes it a good thing I was only going to see her once anyways since I was switching to an PT closer to my campus. So scoping out a PT is just as important as scoping out a surgeon!

I got home and started feeling weak and dizzy because all I have had since 10 hours before my surgery to that point was a few slices of bread and some juice. I still couldn't eat but decided to force feed myself some chicken. It let me get up and walk off my stomach pains a little bit as well as get my knee feeling comfortable to bend and straighten. I think I have gained a couple degrees of flexion since this morning simply by crutching around the room and swinging my bad leg as I go.

Despite being discouraged at how little I am able to do at this point, the rate of recovery is really stunning right now and I can only pray it continues to be so.

5 Hours post op.

Today was the day 1 in my recovery from a torn ACL, surgery day. The registration and all the other logistics was pretty simple and I was in the surgical waiting room within the hour I got there. The doctor came first and answered a few of my questions and then the anesthesiologist. I had no other choice but to take general anesthesia but I asked for a femoral nerve block for later on.

I remember them injecting a sedative into my IV and withing seconds I felt like I was drunk. They wheeled me into the operating room, I was shivering due to the cold, and the next thing I remember was waking up in the recovery room.

Now I am back at a hotel and have my foot elevated to allow for better knee extension. I am on oxycodon so it doesn't hurt as much but there is still a constant dull pain that I know will keep me up all night. The femoral nerve block may also be a big help so I am definitely not looking forward to tomorrow.

The doctor said not to weight bear until my follow up with him in 4 days so I find it weird that all the other ppl I have read about said their doctors told them to weight bear as soon as it was tolerable.

I am ok when I sleep on the bed but as soon as I get up and start crutching around I get really nauscious and want to throw up, the anesthesia hasn't completely worn off though I felt really good when I first woke up in the recovery room.

For now the doctor says work on extensive and allow my leg to hang off the bed some times to work on flexion.

I have my first physical therapy session in 2 days, we'll see how that goes.

Pre-surgery/first update

So I was spending some time reading a bunch of forums about ACL reconstruction and many people seem to have a blog to keep record of their recovery and I thought this seemed kind of cool..something to look back on through the long long weeks of rehab. This will also be posted on the forums to help out others going through the process in the future as I found another person's blog to be extremely helpful and inspiring.

Anyways, this all started when I was playing basketball for IM sports about 6 weeks ago. I don't even remember what happened specifically but I just remember hearing this pop that was intensely loud, considering it came from my knee. And that was that, my ACL was gone. The trainer had no idea what he was doing - I was afraid to let him do anything but give me an ice pack, which he couldn't seem to locate in his trainers bag.

It hurt for a couple of days so I though I would go see an orthopedic surgeon while I was at home who suggested I get an MRI. Sadly my suspicions came true and the film showed nothing in between my femur and tibia.

I started reading up on ACL tears and found out as much information as I can before I went in to see another orthopedic surgeon. I even did a whole bunch of research on my doctor, seems logical to find out as much about a person as you can before letting him cut open your knee. The doctor was extremely helpful and definitely earned my trust by just talking to me. I decided to go with a hamstring graft with a cadaver allograft standing by as a backup incase my hamstring tendon was not thick enough.

My surgery is scheduled for March 24th - 9 days from now. I think I've gotten over the fear as well as the dissapointment from knowing I'll be "limpy" for a good few months. I'm actually a bit excited now to get started, jump into my physical therapy and heal as fast as I possibly can.

Next update will be when I wake up from surgery, expect some grogginess in my writing. I will try and do short, brief, and informative weekly updates if possible.