The ACL Repair Blog Firsthand accounts of ACL surgery and recovery

photo: johanlundahl

I must admit that since my knee has not been bothering me in recent months I have completely ignored this site. While i’d love to say that I will be better and post regularly, that’s simply not the case as my life is pretty busy between work and play (also photos).

I was thrilled to wander over here and see that the forum is alive and well. I love to think that I am in some small way helping people out by facilitating the conversations that are going on in there. If any of you forum dwellers want to take on the task of updating the blog with your experiences, please comment on this post. I’d love to see this site getting updated.

To the knee! I started hot yoga up again with the new year. While i was originally a bit tentative I discovered that, as i had hoped, it makes my knee a non issue. The stretching and strengthening of the muscles in my legs makes me forget i’ve ever had any knee trouble. Hurray!

In related news, I got back on skis for the first time since my surgery this last weekend. I was extremely nervous as skiing was how i originally tore my ACL and i knew i hadn’t met some of the fitness goals i’d set for myself regarding skiing. It ended up being just fine and I felt strong skiing two full, but laid back days at Mission Ridge in central Washington.

Stupid me.

I put off going to physical therapy until today since my knee had been steadily feeling better. The PT suspects that a combination of a weak hamstring, bad arch support and a tight IT band are causing some inflammation behind me knee cap. I’m on a regimen of PT and will be shopping for footbeds tonight. With any luck i’m still on for ski season.

The good news is the Dr. said my ACL feels “rock solid”. Unfortunately that does not explain the clicking and soreness I’ve been experiencing for the last two weeks.

His initial diagnosis is that my knee cap has become inflamed and he’s having me me go back to PT for a couple weeks. If that doesn’t help I’ll be back in the MRI with the hope that there’s a bit of torn meniscus which he could scope and clean up, having me back in action for ski season.

After a couple of months of pain free living my knee was feeling as good as it’s felt since before i injured it when i got back from vacation about three weeks ago.

Then suddenly two weeks ago my knee felt a bit unsteady while i was on a walk with my brother. Since then it’s been giving me a fairly noticeable pain.

At first i thought it was some new shoes i’d been wearing, so i switched back to some old ones and that helped a little. The I thought it was my posture at work which i’ve been keeping a close eye on.

Now I’m positively worried about my knee so I’m going in to talk to my surgeon again tomorrow.

This is frustrating, i didn’t want to post on this blog anymore
That said, i’m overwhelmed with the awesome community that’s grown up around this blog. Let me know if there is anything i can do to help facilitate conversations on here.

Hey All-

I got a simple forum going. It’s still a bit rough around the edges, but I’m hoping this will be an easier format for keeping in touch with eachother and talking about our knees. I apologize that you need to register in order to post on the forum, but I just couldn’t figure out a good way to do it without registration.

So please take a minute to sign up and come join me in conversation at the forum.

I’ll try to keep updating the blog with the most interesting stuff from the forum.

Please let me know if you have any suggestions! I’m happy to do whatever it takes to make this site work for you.

- Henry

Hello ACL Bloggers!

My recovery has been going so well that it really hasn’t been at the forefront of my mind. I’m back to commuting on my bike, doing some light hiking and generally living it up. Sadly, this means i’ve been totally ignoring the awesome community here at ACL-Repair.com . I’m totally overwhelmed (and overjoyed!) by the awesome community that has sprung up around this blog and want to ask you the readers what I can do to make it most useful for you?

It seems like most of the comments I’m seeing are discussions about various people’s surgeries and recoveries. Does it seem like this discussion would work well in a forum type layout? Where everyone could start topics and people could respond? Or would it be better if we just had more people posting stories on the blog?

Let me know in the comments because i really do want to keep this awesome community alive.

Thanks so much for all the participation!

- Henry

I realized today that all the emails from the “tell us your story” form were getting caught in my spam filter! And here I thought nobody cared. I’ll be getting back to all of you in due time, sorry it’s taken me so long! Look for some new posts from some of the awesome people that have mailed us to tell us about their knees!

Today I went in for my three month post operative checkup. The doctor asked me a few questions about how my knee was feeling and did his standard exam of the joint. He declared it to be nice and tight and told me I could ride my bike as much as I want, just not to fall ;).

He recommended that i keep going to physical therapy once every other week for a while. I need to check with my insurance to make sure they’ll keep paying, but I’ve been so happy with my PT that I would like to keep going as long as i can.

He reiterated the fact that Allograft tends to take longer to heal.  He indicated that by 6 months out it should be as strong as an autograft would be.  The doctor made a point of telling me that he could start me on a running program at six months, I was not excited about that at all.

Being cleared for bike off is fantastic news.  That means I can start getting my miles in and hopefully be in good shape for some longer rides this summer.   The hardest part will probably be taking it easy and keeping myself out of potentially dangerous situations.

Last night after dinner I was feeling restless and decided to brave the dark and cold for a ride. My route took me south around Lake Union to Fremont where I climbed up the gentle hill of Stone Way to Greenlake. I did have a little soreness during the climb, but nothing that alarmed me. From Greenlake I followed the path of the ill fated Ravenna Creek down to the Burk Gilman trail.

Again it felt fantastic to be on the bike.  I’m incredibly wary of traffic and rough terrain and still keeping it nice and easy.  My average speed was down around 12mph which is probably about 2/3rds of my pre injury speed for a ride like that.

If nothing else last night’s ride made me even more excited about the coming spring and the bicycle borne adventures it’s sure to bring.

I was sitting in a meeting yesterday when i got an email from my dad saying my mom had taken a fall on the ski slopes and torn her ACL and possibly her MCL.  We’ve got all the luck in this family!  She had actually injured the ACL in her other leg several years ago.  My dad also tore his ACL and had the surgery about 15  years ago.   That puts us at 5 torn ACLs between the three of us!

With any luck I’ll get her to come write about her experiences here.