On Friday, October 5^th of (now) last year (2018), I was bouldering at my indoor rock climbing gym after work, when I took a fall from the top of a route, that resulted in me completely tearing my MCL, ACL, and PCL in my right knee.

I know right?… Ouch!

… To be completely honest though, it actually didn’t even really hurt (and no, I’m not just trying to sound like a tough guy) – But I’ll tell you more about the actual injury later on in this post.

**Before you start reading, I want you to know that due to the length of this post, I have written it up in six sections so that you can either: 1) Skip to the parts that you are most interested in, or 2) Skip over parts that you aren’t as interested in.  

I mean, it would be awesome if you read the whole thing! 🙂  But I understand that people have busy lives and short attention spans, so I won’t be overly offended if you don’t.

**Here are the sections, so that you’re aware:

1. Why It Happened
2. How It Happened
3. Blue Toes & The Hospital
4. How Bad Is It?
5. The Aftermath
6. How I’m Doing Now

Andddd, that’s it!  Enjoy!

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The first time I ever rock climbed… About 8 months prior to me joining the gym. CRG was letting everyone climb for free that day, so a bunch of us from work went and tested our limits.

 

1) The Backstory:  Why It Happened

I had recently joined the Central Rock Gym (CRG) in Randolph, MA a little over three months prior to my injury, due to the recommendation (and perpetual persistence 😛 ) of my good friend and co-worker, Jeff. 

I was going about 2-3 times a week with the guys [Jeff (and sometimes his wife), his brother, and a few of their close friends]. 

I’m not gonna lie, when I first started bouldering, I wasn’t necessarily scared of the height per-say, but I was scared of falling and hurting myself (which I’ve now come to learn is a completely valid fear). 🙂

For those who don’t know, bouldering is meant to be a more raw and stripped-down type of climbing.  You don’t use ropes or harnesses, and there is nothing to catch you down at the bottom except for a padded mat (obviously if you’re out in the mountains somewhere, there isn’t going to be a mat below you, but if you’re at a gym, or even a designated outdoor rock climbing spot, there is most likely going to be a padded mat below you to provide a more cushioned landing, should you fall).  But because there are less safety props involved while bouldering, the walls are usually only about 15-16ft high (as opposed to the top roping walls, which is where you use the ropes/harnesses – At our gym, they’re about 40ft high).

 

 

Now, as I was saying, when it came to bouldering, I did have a fear of falling and hurting myself.  In fact, when I first started, there were several times where I would reach the top of a route and panic, not knowing how to get down, and not having the guts to just let myself fall or to jump.  There were even a couple times that I was up there at the top for minutes, my friends encouraging me (probably more like begging me) to just jump and telling me that “I could do it!”. 

I became known for my shrieking… And shrieking quite often.  Pretty much any time I would fall, or jump, or reach a tricky part (or attempt to reach a tricky part), I would shriek… And sometimes scream.

As the weeks flew by though, that fear of falling I had became less and less of an obstacle to overcome.  My technique was improving and I was getting stronger.  I was jumping and letting myself fall from the top more and more frequently.  My shrieking became less of an occurrence, and if I didn’t think I could reach the next hold, I would just be like, “Nope!!” and either climb back down, or let myself fall, whichever was easier.  I began to really enjoy rock climbing and the friendly, inspiring community that I was surrounded by multiple times a week.  I loved the rush of adrenaline and the feeling of accomplishment I would get when I conquered a new route or project.  I looked forward to it, and even referred to CRG as becoming a new happy place for me on my Instagram. 

Ironically, I especially grew to prefer bouldering, since it required less prep work, and was (in my opinion) more exciting and engaging.  Because with bouldering, the routes are shorter, and since you’re not all hooked up like you are if you’re top roping, it’s easier to switch to a new route when you get stuck or “bored” than it is when you’re all roped up.  It’s also fun to watch others climb and observe the techniques they use, which is more difficult to do when you’re climbing up a 40ft wall, or belaying someone who’s climbing up a 40ft wall.

 

After about a month and a half of rock climbing, I began taking the sport more seriously.  I was hitting up my other gym, LA Fitness, which is right across the street from my work, around 5:00-5:30am in the morning, multiple times a week.  Before, I was only going to LA Fitness about once a week, and would work solely on just my legs/butt and abs.  But now, not only was I working on my legs, I was devoting entire sessions to my upper body – My arms, back, and chest.. Always finishing up with some abs. 

The improvement I was seeing and the strength I was gaining in my upper body from these added bonus workouts in the morning was exponential.  My arm and back strength was growing rapidly; it was literally blowing my mind!!  Routes that, before, I could barely get halfway, never mind reach the top, were quickly becoming SO much easier for me – and conquerable!!  I was finishing projects left and right, faster than ever before.  My friends, as well as strangers, were cheering me on, and even Jeff expressed his amazement at my progress several times.

 

All this accomplishment, and all this excitement regarding my rock climbing capabilities, was naturally increasing my confidence.  However, with that confidence, came what you could probably call a bit of recklessness as well. 

In the weeks leading up to my injury, I was almost fully accustomed to being at the top of a route.  I felt more comfortable up there than ever… Perhaps too comfortable. 

There was a contest going on during the month of October: “Who Could Climb A Mile In A Month?”.  The winner would get bragging rights and a discount on a t-shirt.  I was determined to climb that mile, and in an effort to do so, I would still be climbing even long after my friends had left the gym for the night.

 

2) The Story You’ve Been Waiting For:  How It Happened

On the very same night that I suffered my injury, I had taken a similarly dangerous fall that Jeff had actually (conveniently) recorded on his phone – You can view it in the video below (click on the fullscreen setting in the bottom right of the video if you’re not using a phone).  It was one of the most dangerous falls I had taken in the three months I had been going to the gym.  You can see that I’m smiling in the video, and I can assure you that I was in no pain whatsoever, but in my mind, I was like, “Yeahhh, I can’t do too many more of those”.  I knew that it was a particularly precarious fall, and in retrospect, it’s possible that I even slightly tore something right then, which would have naturally increased the severity of the fall that ultimately did me in.

 

Later that night, after my friends had left, I decided to give another try to a route that I had been intermittently working on for at least a few weeks.  It was one of the more intimidating routes for me at the time, because I would always end up getting stuck on this one part close to the top.  But it had been about a week or so since I tried it, so I figured I would see if my increased strength would make a difference this time.

Sure enough, I actually did get past that tricky part for the very first time! – Even after all those hours of climbing!  And so I was finally able to reach the top and place my hand on that last hold; however, I didn’t have enough strength left to securely hold myself up there.  So I fell.  In a very similar manner that you saw in the video above, with my right knee forced inwards as I hit the ground.  Except this time, I fell backwards on my butt instead of forwards on my stomach, and my knee joint had literally popped out of its socket. 

I felt my eyes get wide as they landed on my dislocated knee cap.  It had shifted to the left, so my automatic reflex was to realign my knee and push it back in place, which is exactly what I did.  Within about ten seconds, I rolled over on my back, facing my right side, and with my knees bent about halfway, I tapped it three or four times with my left hand until I thought it looked straight enough. 

Most people are at least some form of baffled when I tell them that I pushed it back in myself instead waiting for someone more qualified to do it for me.  But honestly, I can’t imagine NOT having pushed it back in when I did.  It began swelling almost immediately, so while I understand that it was probably more risky for me to do it myself, it potentially could have been more difficult to do it once everything was blown up twice its size.  Not to mention, it may have also been more painful to do it at a later time instead of in the initial moment of shock.

Reverting back to what I said at the beginning of this post, the whole incident was surprisingly not really painful at all.  I probably wouldn’t have even realized the damage I had done if I hadn’t actually seen it with my own eyes (well, I also would have realized if I tried to stand up and couldn’t, but you know what I mean).  Like, have you ever hurt yourself in a way that brought involuntary tears to your eyes?  Well, I have, but that didn’t even happen to me this time!  I didn’t cry, and it didn’t even feel like I was going to cry.  There were no tears.

I feel like it would have been much more painful if I had shattered my ankles or something, but (thankfully??) I didn’t.  What I did notice though, was that my speech was off… Maybe one would say slightly stuttered?  My Boston accent also came out (which I’ve been told comes out when I’m drunk), but I think the reason these things were happening was because I started shaking.  Like… Involuntary, constant shaking.  My teeth were chattering and everything, and it wasn’t because I was cold.  I was like that for while… At least for the duration of the ambulance ride, and maybe for a bit once we arrived at the hospital, but I don’t remember how long it lasted exactly.

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3) Blue Toes and The Hospital:

The EMT guy sitting by my side in the ambulance was ticked at the first responders for not taking my vitals properly.  He was a funny, young man, and pretty attractive, so at least the ride was enjoyable in that sense.  One of them had taken my rock climbing shoe off of my right foot when I got in the ambulance, so that foot was bare, and it didn’t take long before I noticed that my toes were turning blue.  Like, visibly blue.  My foot was also really numb, so I alerted the EMT about my observation, but he didn’t really react much, so I found myself just kind of hoping that he knew what he was doing and that I wasn’t about to, like, lose my leg or something.  I could still move my toes, so that made me feel slightly better.

Speaking of losing my leg, considering my injury is apparently pretty uncommon and equally serious, I got VERY lucky.  There were a number of even more potentially devastating things that could have gone wrong due to the complexity of the knee joint, like dysfunction of my common peroneal nerve (leading to loss of movement/sensation in my foot/leg), or a severe injury to my popliteal artery (which, according to my vascular doctor, occurs about 25% of the time with these types of injuries, and requires emergency bypass surgery – if not successful, resulting in amputation of the leg) … Just to name a couple.  Luckily, while I may have suffered some vascular/nerve damage, it appears to have been minor, and isn’t enough to impact or worsen my current condition.

So as I said in the beginning, this was all happening on a Friday, which was probably for the best, because my poor parents got the call from me probably around 9:00 at night, and not that I wanted to burden them, but of course they would want to know what was going on with their kid, and would be willing to drive the hour or so to where I was (South Shore Hospital in Weymouth, MA) to take care of me like the caring parents they are.

There was a lot of waiting around at the hospital, which is to be expected, but they eventually took a couple x-rays and the physician assistants even performed an ultrasound on my stomach just to be extra sure that I wasn’t internal bleeding, since I fell from a decent enough height.

Before we left, I was given some ice, an immobilizer knee brace, crutches, and some ibuprofen for the pain and swelling (although, at this point, there still was no pain – the most discomfort I had suffered was trying to position my knee the way they wanted me to for the x-rays, but even that wasn’t bad).

After finally getting outta there, we unfortunately still had a long-ish night ahead of us.  We had to go back to CRG and pick up my car, along with the rest of my belongings that one of the CRG employees had kindly put in the front seat of my car.  Then we had to drive to my apartment in Quincy so that my poor mom could confront my disaster of a room and grab clothes, as well as anything else I might need, as I would be staying with my parents for however long was necessary.  When all that was done, only THEN were we able to commence the 50-minute drive back to North Andover, MA where my parents live.

 

4) The Most Pressing Question: How Bad Is It?

The goal was see a doctor ASAP, but with that weekend being a holiday weekend (Columbus Day), it made things slightly more difficult.  I was able to meet with my new nurse practitioner though, on that Monday, (October 8^th), and she was able to refer me to an orthopedic surgeon located at Sports Medicine North in Peabody, MA.

… Before I go further, I would just like to point out that the timing of this injury was impeccable… And I don’t really mean that in a good way.

That Monday that I saw my nurse practitioner, (October 8th), was actually my 26^th birthday.  I had taken that whole week off (first time I had ever done that for my birthday) to make a solo trip up to Acadia National Park in Maine, because I’ve been WANTING to go back ever since we took a family vacation there in 2012. 

 

Literally could not wait.  I was so excited.  I was gonna go hiking and biking and stargazing at Jordan Pond House and eat (the best) apple cinnamon pancakes at the 2 Cats Restaurant… I even booked a campsite for three nights so I could use some of the gear that I’ve been accumulating over the years.  I was gonna enjoy my favorite time of the year (fall) in one of my favorite places. 

What was even worse, was that I had been kind of neglecting the outdoors and doing other things, because I figured I would get out all of my “outdoorzeeness” (yes, I know that’s not a word) during my trip.

So needless to say, I was quite bummed.  Because if it had happened a week later, I obviously would have been able to go, and even if it had happened a week earlier, I probably still could have at least gone (cuz I was driving/walking less than a week after my injury), I just wouldn’t have been able to do that much.  So while having the week off was good in regards to using that time to get back on my feet (literally), I wasn’t gonna be able to get away with taking another week off for vacation purposes.  And even if I could, it would’ve had to have been past prime fall season, which was part of the whole point of me going in the first place.

ANYWAYYY, I just thought I would take a little detour and bring you in on that small detail before I continue on with “how bad it is”.  Below, you can view some pictures/videos from my birthday, cuz my sister did try to help make the best of it for me. 

 

 

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Later on during that week of the 8^th, I met with my (1^st) surgeon, who told me that I had definitely torn my MCL, and he seemed pretty confident that I had also torn my ACL.  He recommended getting an MRI to confirm, which I would be able to get done on the basement-level floor of the building.  A week after my MRI was completed, I would be able to have my follow-up appointment with him to (finally) find out what the damage was.

I got the MRI done early the next week.  It wasn’t nearly as bad as I thought it was going to be at all.  I guess MRIs on the knees are one of the easiest ones you can do.  They separate your legs with a divider, so you’re free to move your other leg that’s not being examined as much as you want.  Then they try to make sure your bad leg is comfortable before they place a heavier pillow-weight on it to reduce any movement. 

The most difficult part was keeping still, because of course when you have to be still, your body wants to do anything but that.  But it wasn’t bad.  I think you’re usually allowed to take breaks at times, but the MRI for the knee only takes about 25 minutes, so I was able to go the whole time without taking a break.  He gave me the option of listening to music through some headphones that they had available, which I thought best to say “yes” to, cuz I figured the music might be helpful in keeping my mind off of wanting to move my leg.

When it came time for the follow-up appointment about a week later, I wish I had asked for the report my surgeon had written, but I guess I thought that he would give it to me when I got there, so then I forgot to ask.  I did end up receiving a copy of it though, after I went to see a vascular doctor, which my surgeon had recommended upon hearing about my numb, blue toes.

When my (1^st) surgeon walked into the room at the start my follow-up appointment, he immediately shook his head and stated, “you really did a number on your knee, huh?”

He then proceeded to say that complete knee dislocations are pretty rare (they usually only occur during high trauma incidents, like car accidents), but that while I didn’t get a complete dislocation per-say, I did come pretty close. 

Here is the laundry list of damages (using non-technical terms when possible) from the report he wrote after dissecting my MRI images:

• Complete tears of my MCL, ACL, and PCL
• Mild partial tear of my LCL
• Clean fracture of my tibia (shinbone)
• Bone bruise on the top of my tibia
• Clean fracture at the head of my fibula (the smaller bone next to the tibia)
• Bleeding in the joint
• Strain of one of my quad muscles located at the front of my thigh, right above the kneecap (vastus medialis oblique)
• Strain of my hamstring muscle

There were a couple other things listed too, but this was the bulk of it.

So what does all this mean for me exactly? 

Well, if you know anything about the knee, there are four major ligaments that keep it stabilized and prevent misalignment of your leg bones when doing any sort of activity involving your legs: 

There are the medial and lateral collateral ligaments (MCL and LCL), which are located on the inner and outer sides of your knee, respectively.  The MCL connects the femur – your thighbone (the largest bone in your body) to the tibia, which as I mentioned above – is your shinbone, while the LCL connects the femur to the smaller lower leg bone next to the tibia (the fibula).  Together, they prevent the femur from moving side to side, causing abduction or adduction of the knee. 

Then there are the anterior and posterior cruciate ligaments (ACL and PCL), which cross over each other and are located deep within the knee, also connecting the femur to the tibia (like the MCL).  The primary function of the ACL is to prevent the femur from sliding too far backward, or the tibia from sliding too far forward.  The PCL on the other hand, does the opposite, as it prevents the femur from sliding too far forward, or the tibia from sliding too far backward.  The PCL is the strongest of the four ligaments, and is larger than the ACL, as it comes up along the back of the knee.  Because of this, PCL tears make up less than 20% of knee injuries.  Both ligaments together provide further stability, as well as flexibility to the knee, while preventing hyperextension.

Need some help visualizing the ligaments?  If so, I’ve pasted a link below that will lead you to a very basic diagram of the knee, clearly illustrating the four ligaments:

http://orthowashington.com/knee-anatomy.html

So, in short, because I completely tore three out of the four major ligaments in my right knee, it means that my activities are going to be relatively limited for a while until I can get surgery. 

If you’re interested to see what my torn ligaments look like, I’ve snagged some of the images from my MRI and posted them below:

 

 

 

 

5) The Aftermath:

For the first few days following my injury, I really couldn’t put much weight on my affected leg.  Not so much because I thought that I shouldn’t, but because I literally could not.  I would test it out multiple times a day – standing up with my crutches and gradually put more and more weight on my leg, but for the first few days, I was not able to stand (without crutches) using both feet.  I had to balance on my left leg. 

Using crutches made it easier to get around and I was much faster on them, but there were times when it was not convenient to use them because I had to carry things from one place to another (which is hard to do when your hands are occupied with crutches).  So needless to say, my left leg took an absolute BEATING that first week.  Of course my family helped out and got things for me when they could, but when they were all out working, I had to do things for myself.  I mean, even when they were home I tried to reduce the number of times I asked for help just cuz I hate being a burden.  Thankfully, though, my mom ended up buying me a backpack (I had a few at my apartment, we just didn’t think to bring them to my parents’ house on the night of the injury), so that made things easier, especially when carrying stuff up and down the stairs.  But those first few days were a struggle. 

Let me tell ya, you have no idea how easy it is to do normal, every day things in life until you are handicapped in some way.  Simple tasks like preparing a bowl of cereal and taking a shower quickly become a project when you can’t put any weight on one of your legs.  I’ve definitely come to appreciate having all my limbs and can’t imagine how much more difficult life must be for those who don’t.  I mean, yeah, I’m sure it’s something you can learn to get used to and you would probably come up with life hacks as time went on to make your life easier, but still.  Just something to think about.

 

 

By Wednesday of the following week (so 5 days later), I started taking itty bitty steps without my crutches.  It’s possible that I could have started walking a little bit earlier, but at that point, I hadn’t seen a surgeon, so I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to be trying to walk or not.  But Wednesday was when I met my (1^st) surgeon for the first time, and he gave me the go-ahead to start walking and bending my leg as soon as possible.  So I did!  They gave me a much better knee brace that would allow my knee the flexibility to bend more (once it was able to).  And I’ll say, it felt amazingggg taking those first itty bitty steps (I think it worried my mom a bit, but oh wellllz).  I felt like a little kid learning how to walk again, haha.

Over just the next couple days, my walking skills improved dramatically.  I could walk pretty well without crutches by Friday; however, I was still a bit slow, so sometimes I used crutches just so that it wouldn’t take me an hour to walk 20 feet (that was an exaggeration, obvs, but you get my point).

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In terms of driving, even though my right leg was my bad leg, I would have considered myself safe to drive even before I started walking.  Reason being: it doesn’t require as much weight to step on a brake pedal as it does to take a walking step, so I felt pretty confident that I would be able to operate a car.  And it only took me a couple days or so after my injury to be able to lift my leg up off of whatever bed/couch I was laying down on, so I was convinced that I would be able to step on the gas and shift my leg from the gas to the brake pedal as needed.  My parents and sister were SUPERRR against the concept of me driving at first, but my friends had made plans a few weeks earlier to have dinner with me on that Friday for my birthday at one of my favorite restaurants in the area (called “India” – located on Hope street in Providence, RI), so I was very determined to show up and prove to everyone that I was capable of driving after all.  Sure enough, I spent at least three hours driving in my car that day and was totally fine.

I was fine enough to attend work the following week, which of course commenced the seemingly endless string of questions from people in regards to what happened with my knee.  I didn’t mind it though.  I never got annoyed or bored of talking about it, really.  Because of my knee, people that I had never even spoken to before started up conversations with me, and it was kind of nice to know that people were curious and/or cared.

I believe it was by the end of that working week that I was able to bend my knee enough to go up the stairs like a normal person (instead of taking it one stair at a time) – still couldn’t go down the stairs normally – but I could go up them.  Going down the stairs proved to be much more difficult and I actually kind of really hurt myself once, because one time, I had forgotten to take the porch steps one stair at a time, and instead, I went down just as I normally would as if nothing was wrong with my knee… And I’m not gonna lie… THAT hurt (only for a brief while, but still).  Sometimes it was hard not to let my muscle memory take over.  Constantly had to be mindful of my movements.

The week after I started going up the stairs normally was when I began to go down them normally.  However, the bigger and steeper the step, the harder it was for me to go down them.  I just had to be mindful.

As more time went on, I was able to get around pretty well.  People were commenting on how quickly I was able to walk, and for some, I think it made it seem like me wearing my knee brace was unnecessary.  Which I guess in way was true – I could walk without it just fine – but I learned the hard way that it was definitely beneficial to wear it if I was going to be on my feet all day, because one time I decided to go without it on a particularly busy day, and by the end of the 8.5 hours, my knee literally felt like it was going to explode.

 

I guess I should mention that I also started doing physical therapy around this time, which was Great.Fun! to deal with after just turning 26 and having to scramble to get health insurance of my own (because of course for the first time in my life I actually truly needed it).  Some may wonder why I would commit to physical therapy when I hadn’t had my surgery yet, and the reason for that is because it helps make you stronger and gets your mobility to where it needs to be, so that after surgery, you recover more quickly.  While some of the exercises they make you do seem silly, physical therapy, in general, definitely helps.  It also gives you a more easily accessible person to turn to if you’re looking for advice on what you should and should not be doing, or if your injury is really starting to give you grief.

I’m fortunate to say that (in my surgeons’ opinions) my knee has exceptionally good mobility considering the damage.  I can bend it 140° now (and straighten it to 0°), and twist it reasonably well; however, I can’t bend it ALL the way, and it’s not able to support much weight when it is bent, so I’m not really able to do squats or even hike a decent trail that would require climbing onto rocks constantly. 

To be honest though, even though I can do certain things, I shouldn’t be over exerting myself.  Which is why the past few months have kind of sucked, because even though part of me wants to go out in nature and just stroll along on an easy trail that has no hills whatsoever, the other part of me is worried about the additional (unnecessary) wear and tear I would be putting on my knee when it hasn’t been healed yet.  I already mentioned in the paragraphs above, how when I’m on my feet all day at work, my knee tends to feel like it is going to explode by the end of the day… Which obviously wouldn’t be normal if my knee was in good condition.

Things that I definitely cannot do at all include running and jumping, or anything that would remotely require me to do anything related to these sorts of activities.  My dancing skills are disappointingly compromised, compared to how I would normally bust my moves, and I can’t get on my hands and knees… Or at least I shouldn’t… To be honest, I haven’t totally tried it yet, but that’s because I can’t imagine it going well.

It’s so strange, but it’s as if I never had any muscle in my right leg.  Even though it was my dominant leg before, it’s noticeably smaller than my left leg now, and that includes both my calf and thigh muscles.  And it’s jiggly… Hehe 😛  But that’s just the nature of the injury.  Once I start healing after surgery, my right leg (should) start to go grow back to its normal size.

 

6) How I’m Doing Now

So I was honestly doing fine with my injury until literally New Years day (2019).  Up until that point, I was basically never in pain and only had infrequent, very brief isolated moments of discomfort.  I was able to move around reasonably well, as I described in the section above.  But then, practically overnight, things started going downhill. 

I was hoping it was just a phase, but it’s been almost three weeks now, as I am writing this, and things are still worse than they were before New Years. 

I think it is just a combination of the inflammation being essentially gone, and the scar tissue no longer really being present to cushion my every day movements.  So things are starting to slide inside my leg now because there’s no ligaments (or scar tissue) to hold things together where they should be.  There’s also just probably been a reasonable amount of wear and tear on everything else that’s still intact in the knee area, considering it’s been about 3.5 months now since I fell at CRG and I still haven’t been able to have surgery.

Thankfully though, as of yesterday (1/18), I FINALLY have a date set in stone for my surgery (February 8, 2019)… Should be a fun day!! 😛  Kinda glad it didn’t get pushed out to March, even though I’m probably in for some tough weeks ahead.  Definitely better to get it done sooner rather than later at this point.

I’ve resorted to taking the elevator when I can because that discomfort I used to have when going down the stairs has returned and I just don’t want to irritate things even more.  I also walk slower now… I’m no longer zooming around in the hallways, because there have been a few times when my bones must have clashed together or something, which caused my knee to feel discomfort and “give out” slightly.  So I’m trying to avoid that from happening by walking slower and monitoring how I take my steps.

I haven’t explained this yet, but after the follow up appointment that I had (the week after my MRI), my (1^st) surgeon said he wanted me back in a month to see what was healing and how it was healing.

To be honest, it kind of pisses me off, because my (1^st) surgeon’s “specialty” was repairing the ACL… The ACL only.  But as you know, I completely tore not only my ACL, but also my MCL and my PCL.  In my opinion, he should have known right away that my injury was going to be too complex for him to be able to fix.  I mean, I understand that sometimes ligaments heal and stuff and that you’re typically supposed to wait for the swelling to go down before surgery anyway, but in my opinion, he shouldn’t have waited an extra month to realize that he just wasn’t going to be able to do it.

Because sure enough, after that month went by (we’re talking over a month and a half since I had fallen), he was able to tell within 5 minutes that both my ACL and PCL had still not healed at all and that my MCL had only partially healed. 

He filled out a slip and wrote a note on it, telling the checkout desk lady to set me up with a new surgeon ASAP (I’m not including names for privacy reasons).  Luckily, my new surgeon (who I actually liked way better because he seemed much more sincere and actually took the time to sit down and talk with me for a good 15 minutes instead of rushing me out the door in about five) was available to meet with me early that next week. 

When I met with my new surgeon, he confirmed what my first surgeon had said: that my ACL and PCL were still “gone” and that my MCL had only partially healed.  What I mean by “partially healed”, is that when my leg is straight, there is an “endpoint” when trying to move just my lower leg to the right (my right), but when my knee is bent, it opens up, so where the MCL is supposed to be preventing that movement of my lower leg to the right, it’s not.

Surgery on the ACL and PCL can be done arthroscopically, which means they don’t need to cut open the whole knee, they can just drill little holes to where they need to go.  To repair the MCL, however, there is no other way than to cut open the whole knee to be able to operate.  Performing surgery on just the ACL and PCL would take about three hours.  So adding on the MCL sounds like it involves more time and more risk, which my new surgeon wasn’t sure was necessary, since it was at least partially healed. 

My new surgeon said that he typically performs these surgeries alongside another (older and more experienced) surgeon who has “more gray hair” than him.  And since he wasn’t sure whether or not they should definitely perform surgery on the MCL as well, he said that he would feel more comfortable if I met with that older surgeon beforehand, just to have his input.  Which is honestly all well and good, except for the fact that the older surgeon wasn’t available to meet with me until pretty much exactly two months after that day (January 24^th).

Meeting with my (older) surgeon on the 24^th didn’t give me any different news.  They will have to reconstruct the ACL and PCL.  They are leaning towards not operating on the MCL because they believe that any portion of it that’s not healed, should heal from all the scar tissue that’s generated from the repair of the ACL and PCL.  With that being said, they will have the tools ready, should they find that they need to repair the MCL as well.  So I guess we’ll just have to wait and see what happens!

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Phew!  I know, that was a long one.  Right around 12 pages on Microsoft Word.  What can I say, I’m not a very concise person!  😛  But I hope it was informational at times and entertaining enough to read when it wasn’t… Props to you if you read all the way down to here!  Hopefully it gave you some insight on an injury like this if you should ever have to suffer one yourself (let’s hope not).

Have any of you ever had an injury like this?  Feel free to vent about it in the comments!! 

And as always, thanks for reading.  If you wanna be around for when Part 2 of this blog post comes out, or for when any of my other future blog posts come out, be sure to subscribe via this link: 

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Thanks again,

-Brianna-Marie