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...



Wednesday, April 11, 2007

It's the hamstring, stupid

So the lesson is, and the reason my doctor hedged a little on deciding whether or not to use my hamstring for an autograft is this: The hamstring autograft is going to take a long time to heal.

I keep pulling / tweaking my hamstring with very painful results doing very ordinary things like getting out of bed or getting up from a chair. At present, I can only curl about 2 lbs. lying on my stomach using ankle weights. At the gym, I use the low cable with a velcro cuff and can only partially curl 2 lbs. It's frustrating since the knee otherwise is feeling excellent. I can see that this is going to take a while - a long stretch of systematically greater weight and persistent stretching to get it back. I can't imagine cycling the hills around here with the hammie in its current state. I'd have no climbing strength, especially from the saddle, as opposed to standing up on the pedals.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Good choice, if you ask me--it took a full year to recover from a hamstring injury...can be the pits; second only to Achilles, or maybe ACL... you-go, SG.

I guess I am anonymous, but it's me, Christina

Sunil said...

The ACL is one of four major ligaments that stabilize the knee. In active individuals, especially those playing sports with rapid changes in direction such as soccer, baseball, hockey, football, or skiing, an Acl Tear is one of the most common significant injuries to the knee.