Seeing all the images and videos of people pre / post-op of their surgery reminds me of my own experience.
I tore my ACL, PCL MCL and Medial Meniscus back in 2010 playing football. I jumped up high and my knee hyperextended the wrong way. I heard a loud pop and I remember wanting to scream but no sound came out of my mouth. I later walked off the pitch 5 minutes after sustaining it. I went to hospital and they didn’t even do an MRI. It was always x-rays. The world cup was happening at the time and I, like many of you, was just watching it whilst laying on a bed / sofa.
I started to get sharp, stabbing pains in the joint. It got to the point where in every minute, It occured 4/5 times. My mother, bless her, took me to the hospital. She wanted me to go earlier but I refused and tried to handle the pain. I had an extremely high pain threshold…something which isn’t good as you never know the extent of the injury.
At hospital, they carried on doing X-rays. I was adamant that I should have MRI. They said it could the result of a fracture and they let me go home. As I got home, I was watching football and I felt drowsy. A friend was coming to visit me from London as I lived in Cardiff, Wales at the time. I can’t describe it but I felt like I wanted to sleep forever. As he visited, he called the ambulance. It turns out I had blood poisoning. The joint had puss within it. Don’t really know how that happened. I was sweating one moment and shivering the next.
Doctors later told me that I may need my leg from the knee below amputated due to the damage by the infection. I remember looking at my mum and burst into tears. I was active, I did athletics and I always looked after my health. I went into surgery not knowing what the outcome would be.
When I woke up, my leg was still there. I had an MRI done privately and the doctor told me that I had the Unhappy Triad. I asked him how much would it cost to fix me. It was £6000 at the time. I said I would pay. I was desperate to be back to normal. I was so lucky that he said he’d arrange something and I ended up with the surgery paid for by the NHS. I was fitted in and scheduled to have surgery within 2 days after seeing him. I had a hamstring graft ACL reconstruction but the downside was the 60% of my meniscus was taken out.
So after the two surgeries, I had extensive rehab. Started to train again. I managed to run a mile within 4 mins 33s. But I found that If I ran too much, I get a lot of pain. I still job around and can run fine but if I carried on, I would need a knee replacement sooner rather than later.
I am going 10 years strong now. Make sure you guys focus on rehab and DO the strength conditioning exercises. Also ensure that you try and stretch everyday when you are comfortable. Don’t loose your range of motion. It’s very important that does not happen to you. I have lost some but still manage to do stuff.
I hope you’re all well and look forward to hearing your stories. Have an awesome week.