Jaime, who recently commented on the ACL Happy Hour post, wrote:

“I am a ski patroller in the East and was skiing moguls and made a cut turn and heard the biggest POP you could imagine. My ACL was torn and along with it came a piece of my tibia which is displaced, and a torn meniscus. I have surgery next week and depending on how big the bone piece is the surgeon will either fix my meniscus, take out the bone fragment, clean it up, rehab me and then do the ACL reconstruction as a separate surgery… ORR if the bone fragment is too big to be removed he will pin it and suture it back, and then repair my ACL, meniscus and clean it all up in one surgery. Unfortunately, the second option will likely leave me with a very difficult recovery of motion.

So, I too am really nervous about the surgery and getting back to skiing. I never really thought I would have an injury like this, especially as a patroller. If this is still active, I would appreciate if anyone has had the displaced tibial bone piece I would appreciate information on the recovery for this!”

So here’s how two different sugeries and two different graphs are doing at two different points in their recoveries:

Cadaver Graft, 6 weeks out…Kate, my friend, walked into the bar like it was nothing. No crutches, no brace. Not even a gimp. If you didn’t know she had surgery, you couldn’t tell anything. Prior to her surgery, Kate enjoyed an active lifestyle of hiking, biking and skiing. (She tore her ACL skiing in Tahoe.) Now, she isn’t quite running just yet, but she uses the excercise bike and is building her strenght back up. She will be back on the slopes in no time for the season. She took off work for three weeks.

Me…still not running, but moving around just fine. I don’t even think about me knee anymore. I can sit cross-legged again, do light yoga and kneel on my knees. The scar hasn’t gone clear yet, but it is certainly starting to fade into oblivion. It will be gone in no time. I, too, plan to hit the slopes this season–that’s my current goal. Perhaps Kate and I will do an ACL ski trip, and this time she will conquer Tahoe, no fear at all. Details to come….

Any other ACL skiers out there? Perhaps we can all plan a ski trip together–a celebration of progress, if you will. 

Pic from tahoesbest.com

Athletes…

…”Happy Prospectors…”

…Innocent Bystanders and girls named “Katie.”

Although I have to be the “tough girl” I publicly publish that I didn’t cry when I tore my ACL, I know that every injury is different. In all my years of playing sports, soccer, Ultimate and volleyball especially, I have seen many people fall to the ground screaming out in excruciating pain.

I hate saying this now, but I always thought that people who torn their ACLs were kinda weak. Not the case at all! I can tell you that it’s not the level of activity you are competing at that determines a tear, it’s the small details (second-nature motions) that can go slightly wrong–a bad hop, an awkward fall or a quick twist in the wrong direction.

Be careful out there!

A great list of knee excercises & stretches that will help prevent tears.

The University of Rochester Medical Center offers an ACL Injury Prevention Program which features these sample excercises:

• Warm-ups: Jog, slides, backpedals
• Strengthening: Lunge walk, ball bridge, calf raise
• Plyometrics: Lateral, front/back & single leg hops, rebound jumps, scissor jumps
• Agility:Shuttle and pivot runs
• Stretching Hamstrings, quads, calves, groin and hip flexors

On my graceful landing, my knee twisted in a way it hadn’t before, and I heard the sound that I hear when my chiropractor suddenly jerks my neck to one side–a symphony of snaps, crackles and pops that culminated into one loud snapcracklepop.

“What the hell just happened,?” I thought.
I tried to push myself up on my dominant, now-injured knee, but I couldn’t. I could only sub out and scoot on more scratchy turf to the sideline–a whopping one foot away. Moments later I got back on my feet and walked around with a limp. I wasn’t sure what to think. It felt as though someone kicked me in the shin and a numbing sensation captured my knee and simultaneously spread to my toes.
Did I just tear my ACL? But don’t people cry if that happens?
My lack of tears (none to be exact) and minimal complaints stunned me and my teammates.

Although no one could correctly diagnose the injury, I knew something was wrong when we left the field. Exiting a steamy fieldhouse, I stepped outside into the harsh, bitter cold of Chicago’s 8-month long winter. After calling, “shotgun” and carefully navigating around the black-ice-covered sidewalk, I tried hunch into the car.
Suddenly, I screamed.
My tibia (lower leg bone) slid past my femur (hip bone) in a twist that took my stomach with it in a nauseating pull. My lower leg went to the right. My upper leg went to the left. I couldn’t believe it–a circus-freak leg–so I did it again. Same deal. That’s when I realized that an ACL, which attaches your tibia to your femur, is so crucial to normal life. Actually, I was thinking how gross it was that my tibia floated (and twisted) freely as it disconnected from my tibia. Time to go to the ER!

Five hours later, I was released with a pair of cruthes, a leg brace and some good news–nothing was broken or torn. At this time, that was all hard to believe since my kneecap disappeared into the fluid-filled cushioning that expanded around my knee to the size of a 16-inch softball. You couldn’t even call it a knee anymore. More like a cankle times 10.
By now, the pain definitely settled in. So did the denial. I was five days away from my winter ski trip to Whistler, Canada.

I even bought new K2 skis and couldn’t wait to carve into the world’s best powder.

Now for some bad news: MRI results indeed revealed a complete ACL tear and meniscal damage. This meant surgery, recovery, the possibility of no more sports and, of course, no ski trip.

My knee may have been torn, but my spirit wasn’t broken. Did I go to Whistler? Yes (knee can).That trip was the beginning of my four-month pre-op recovery. I’ve learned you can do lots of things without an ACL. And I’m imagining the possibilities with a new one. If all goes well with post-op rehab, I’ll journey abroad again to bring my new knee to New Zealand in September. Until then, this is my ACL recovery story.