#acl tear

[alexiasleftoversalmon]

Oh Lena, I’m so so so so sorry. I’m crushed for you. The WOSO community is all behind you. We love you and you got this 💔❤️

[nettywerk]

Had an amazing few days of skiing with family. And on my last run today I managed to tear my acl. It really was the full experience, got to ride the toboggan down the mountain with ski patrol. The med center on site was incredibly helpful too. I tend to get lucky with this shit. I’ll be good eventually (imma say it till it’s true). I’ve got plenty of support. But damn I’m still anxious about the surgery, recovery and possibly doing something stupid to injure myself further.

[oovojaver]

guys i’m not sure i wanna watch this game. we are going to get our as BEAT. NO POINT GUARDS. we are NOT walking out of that arena alive. 😔💔

[destielmemenews]

source 1

source 2

[luckyspike]

This week in Spike’s misadventures: Spike gets a dead person’s Achilles tendon stuck into her knee because she tore her ACL

It’s going well!

[iumbles]

I’m living the bisexual nightmare: I tore my ACL and cannot sit weird

[futurenavy]

I love my new life and job in Colorado….. but I still wonder every day what life would have been like if I had ended up in the Navy :/

[kneehab]

three months

I hit twelve weeks post op on Monday (two days ago), and I had my first round of isokinetic strength testing yesterday, so lots to catch up on documenting.

First, all the good (and there is lots of good!):

I don’t think about my knee at all, except when I’m at PT, someone asks about it, or I’m trying a new exercise or something at a higher weight in the gym. It occupies very little space in my head on a day to day basis.

I have full and equal range of motion! I have been at full extension since day 1 thanks to me not having hyperextension and due to the leg brace being locked straight, but I hit full knee flexion (about 155 degrees for me) at 8.5 weeks post op, so just after my last update was written. I can also fully sit on my heels kneeling.

I’ve started swimming. Not a ton, but around the beaches in Washington (it’s been so hot) and even in a pool at a gym I got a day pass for.

I’m walking and cycling tons now, sometimes walking upwards of 20,000 steps a day, which feels great.

I tested essentially equally on my functional testing. That includes things like a Y-balance test, where a PT measures how far you can touch your toe while standing on one leg at a time, things like that.

I don’t have any more pain behind my knee when flexing my quad.

Swelling is basically gone. Occasionally after a hard gym day or a really long walk I will get a tiny bit of swelling but it’ll be gone by the next morning.

I’ve started some basic plyometric/jumping/pre-running movements in PT! This includes gently bouncing up and down on your toes and softly landing from one leg onto the other. 

... And the tough.

Luckily, the tough is pretty minimal, but the main one is that I didn’t get the strength testing results I was hoping for. I’m at about 65% LSI, in other words, my left quad is about 65% as strong as my right. My PT says this is a solid number for where I am at in the recovery, but it’s hard not to be pretty disappointed as I need to be at 80% to run. But it’s helpful to have the clarity of where I’m at, and what my next steps need to be to hit my goals. My mission for this month is to work my quad hard, consistently, every other day, no excuses, so I can be as close to 80% as possible by my next round of testing at 4 months.

I think I might be struggling to eat enough protein, and also eating enough in general. I want to make this a focus of the next month, too. I can’t build a quad if I’m not giving it protein.

I’ve also just been struggling with a feeling of loss. I’m sad to be missing out on stuff still. Even though things are infinitely better than they were a month or two ago, I’m still not able to do many of the things I love. I can’t run, I can’t do aerial silks, I can’t do a triathlon, and that sucks because the season will be over by the time I could do so physically.

At the end of the day, things are pretty great. My graft is still there and strong, and I’m able to walk and hike and swim and be outside. I’m so grateful that the early stages of recovery are behind me, as I remember in those early days I just couldn’t imagine there would be a day again where I could just take a long walk without limping.

And I am really grateful for the good habits that the regimen of PT is teaching me. It’s building a gym habit. I never did very much squatting or strength training in general and was a bit of a “cardio queen”, so needing to do this to meet tangible goals is giving me the structure to develop discipline around strength training.

Onto the next month, and welcoming a mindset of growth and discipline, as well as a sense of joy in the small moments of new abilities.