My Road Thus Far I - Injury through Month 0

I was very curious to track my progress against others', since by nature people have the need to compare. I wanted to be ahead of the curve, even though it meant nothing, since only my own progress and ability made any real difference. But it did help mentally, so I write this down in the hopes of providing some semblance of structure against which another fellow-sufferer of an ACl tear can work.

Injury: July 27, '08
- on defense, force is flick, guarding handler near front of stack, playing slightly off to force side. IO flick to my man, I sprint to stop the continue backhand break. As I try to shut it down, I turn laterally to face my man and put on a mark, still moving laterally towards the break side. Plant my foot (heel first) to stop the successive inside out flick break, knee bows out laterally so that my knee in essence moves out over the right ankle, chunky noise in my knee, hit the ground in high level of pain.
- was able to march forwards from squat position, leading trainer to believe ACl not torn, potentially PCL or some other knee ligament. proceed to drink.

Doctor Appt: July 28, '08
- Doctor checks out knee, thinks ACL is torn, orders MRI

MRI: July 29, '08
- Taken, wait for results

MRI Results: July 30, '08
- ACL torn, all else is fine. Surgery scheduled.

Surgery: August 8, '08
- Patellar Autograft route. They were gong to give me a spinal block and allow me to watch the procedure, but then renegged on that, saying it the surgery could take longer than the spinal block might last. Knocked me out.
- When i awoke, they were pretty harsh, and made me dress myself, which was pretty tough as I couldn't move my leg, could barely tell what was going on, and didn't know what I Could/Couldn't do. I kind of wish I had videotape of this, I imagine it took me forever.

Post-Op Weekend: August 09/10, '08
- Tons of chilling. Did not need to poop for like once until like a week later due to vicodin. Got off Vicodin by Monday since I didn't need it and it made me so constipated. Made sure to invite many, many friends over to watch movies, since I could use pity to get them to do shit for me. Played lots of video games, ate ice cream. Wrote innumerable alphabets with my big toe lying on my back with my leg up the wall to spurn blood flow throughout my leg and reduce swelling. On crutches all the time, 0% weight bearing.

PT Begins: Monday, August 11, '08
- First of many. Because my surgery occurred so quickly after injury, and I had been training hard throughout the summer, I entered PT with lots of latent quad muscle, and this helped immensely. I could immediately do straight leg lifts well, and although my quad had difficulty firing, when hooked up to electrode stimulators, it performed well and showed very good potential. My road was nicely paved due to the quickness of my surgery.

Month 0: Aug 8 - Sept 5, '08
- Each week meant a bit more weight born by my leg, less by my crutches. 0% first week, 25% 2nd, 50% third, 75% fourth, done. I was off crutches by September (none too soon). This was important for me personally as I had initially planned to move west, driving, about a month previous, but these plans were obviously delayed with the injury. I had to wait until I could sit, unmoving, for 8-10 hours (driving), and this would've been impossible in that first month, unless i took half hour to hour-long breaks to elevate, compress, and ice my knee to decrease the swelling that occurred during the day walking around.
- Mobility was never much of an issue. I immediately had good mobility, and by week 2, I was about 3 inches from touching my heel to my rear. This was far ahead of schedule, and I was told to simply not push it and I'd be just fine there.
- I grew to love the electric stim machine quickly. It's just an incredibly strange feeling to have something firing your muscles FOR you. I constantly jacked up the stim to the max when the therapists weren't looking. They said it didn't matter, that the more the better as long as you can stand it.
- My favorite device was the GameReady. It's a compression sleeve that velcroes around your knee and about 4 inches above and below. It is hooked up to an ice-water pump, so it basically is fastened around your leg then slowly gets tighter and tighter and colder and colder and feels amazing. When you're done they take it off and your knee went from pontoon to resembling a knee again.
- The scar was never an issue either. My brother had SERIOUS issues with his cut-- it got infected, a thread got stuck in his skin and caused issues, and at this point looks much worse than mine (he tore his acl about a month before me). Mine healed beautifully, and is only looking better.
- PT itself focused on a bike ride, the leg press, calf raises, lots of calf movements with a resistance band, an exercise where you put an exercise band behind your knee and, standing, it pulls away as you stand and straighten your leg, followed by electric stim and some GameReady. On my own it was focused on swelling reduction and resistance band work.