A knee knows

I tore the anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) in my left knee skiing at Mt. Wachusett in central Mass. on January 18, 2007. This is a common injury to weekend warriors like myself, so I thought others might like to know what happens once you've done something unfortunate like this to your body. Maybe you've injured yourself too, and feel like the game's over. However, you can return to your sport -- you just need to stay focused and do the work.

Here's where it started...


Thursday, March 15, 2007

Sutures removed

My orthopod had me in today, a day early because of a snow storm coming tonight and tomorrow. They removed the sutures and the staples, and I came away with a CD of arthroscopic still images of the procedure.

My doctor also explained that the ACL is at present probably 150% the strength of my ACL prior to injury. He said that this strength actually declines over the next 8 weeks or so, as the graft develops a blood supply and so on. At 8 weeks, he said it would have about 75% the strength of a normal ACL, but that the knee would feel very good. A lot of people who have the procedure might wonder at that point why they couldn't return to normal athletic activity, but it's important to allow the healing process to continue, and not to risk re-injury by doing anything too vigorous too soon. He also sat with me and talked me through the arthroscope images.
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