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...



Friday, April 20, 2007

6 weeks post-op

The hamstring is still very tender. I did manage to go two days in a row before pulling it yet again reaching casually to pat the dog one afternoon. In fact, it's gotten bad enough that I have a nasty looking bruise on the back of my leg that I didn't even notice until my PT session yesterday.

So now I'm working with a new PT on my knee: John P. He had me sit on the floor with a 4 foot long piece of 4 inch plastic pipe under my involved leg and then showed me how to roll the pipe against my sore hamstring to break up the scar tissue and help stretch it out. This hurt like hell, but I could feel it doing the job. The big lump I had on the back of my thigh was nearly gone after this session. He said I need to do this 2x/day. So, in one session, my new PT, John, is already giving me a way to deal with the hamstring that didn't occur to the PTs at Fallon.

The other thing I like about this PT shop is that while I'm booked for 30 minutes, I sometimes spend 90 minutes there, a lot of the time doing exercises that John tells me to do, or sets up for me. He might be treating three people at once, but I never feel neglected. The atmosphere in the big therapy room is collegial, funny, and supportive. We were all commiserating with a woman who was having an intense and clearly painful massage session on her hip by one of the senior PTs. Pain is basically a way of life for everyone there, either from a treatment perspective or as a patient dealing with its effects every day. They seem to get that, appreciate it, and moreover, accept it, which makes it easier for all to deal with it. We acknowledge it, work on it, and in the end accept that it's a part of our lives at this point. For a lot of people, it's a constant presence or force in their lives. I have it easy compared to a lot of these folks.

Wednesday, April 11, 2007

Fallon PT: You're Fired!

At my last session, my PT let on that she and the junior PT who's been working with me are a bit "bored" and clearly are not sure what to do with me. I get the sense they're accustomed to working with elderly and sedentary patients. It's not like I'm a marathoner or anything, but this is an indication to me that I need to find someone else. The guy I've been working with on my shoulder, who has a lot of experience working with real athletes, has been excellent, so I'm switching the remainder of my PT sessions to him. The first four weeks post-op have been fine with this group, but it's time to step it up and move on.

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.

Friday, April 6, 2007

4 weeks post-op today

Range of motion continues to improve, along with strength. I've got very close to 140 degrees of flexion. Not much pain to speak of at this point, and the knee feels mostly stable. Now and then just moving around the kitchen, I'll get a little twinge from just lifting my leg and having the knee turn a bit. In general, it feels best when the quads are loaded. Unloaded, the knee sometimes feels wonky.

I'm doing regular workouts at the gym, including squats (yesterday, comfortably with 65 lbs. on the squat rack), also low cable adductor/abductor, leg presses, calf extensions, leg flexor raises, and sessions on the stationary bike. I haven't yet had the time for an aerobic session, but the knee feels plenty strong enough for it.

So, the knee progresses well, but the shoulder, not so much. Had a vigorous PT session day before yesterday, and it's quite sore, and feels worse actually. The fact that I can't tell at this point if I'm making progress or not is a bit discouraging, since the knee is better every day. I recently re-upped for quite a few more PT sessions on the shoulder, but it might be time to re-evaluate. I've been working this now for two months actively, with a brief hiatus for the knee surgery and while I'm definitely gaining strength in the back of my shoulder it's far from being in a tennis-ready state. What I need to see is a steady time line of progress, where the knee and the shoulder are both ready for tennis at more or less the same time later this year (October?).