The swelling has slowly gone down and most pain is now associated with flexion and getting up in the morning and putting my leg on the ground. I feel a rush of blood going down my leg which burns for a minute or two, but after doing some plantar flexion/dorsiflexion that pain goes away. The biggest improvement I’ve seen so far is in my quad contraction:
Physical Therapy
I have started doing official PT with a physio at Academy Physical Therapy. The first session was just an evaluation, and today’s session definitely showed me how fast I should be progressing. The biggest hurdle for me is mental, and being able to confidently put weight on the injured leg. Today the physio had me walk for 150-200 feet in the hallways of the office. Physio told me to stop using the brace as and do a few tough exercises twice daily:
Quad Sets – as many as I can, going to shoot for 3X50
Wall Hang – This is for flexion, where I lay on my back and mark where my hips are and mark where my feet are on the wall. Slowly bring the legs down to see how far my feet can go on the wall. 5-10 minutes.
Bike – This is the hardest one so far, but trying to do a full revolution on the bike. For the bike at the PT office, I’m at the highest seat setting (27) and I still can’t make the full revolution. Aim for 15 revolutions.
Wall Squat – 2X15 don’t pass 90 degrees of flexion
Been consistently doing the exercises from b-reddy’s manual and did one set in the morning and one set at night. I was even able to throw in upper body work since I haven’t touched those muscles in over a week. Just because you have a messed up ACL doesn’t mean you can’t work out other body parts.
The two biggest issues right now are:
Swelling – I’m usually not a “sweller” and I’ve been icing like crazy, but my knee is still so puffed up you can’t make out the shape of the patella or any of the surrounding muscles (or lack thereof). This is the one time where I actually don’t want to get swole, or achieve hypertrophy for the lifters out there.
Flexion – It’s so freaking weird to not bend your knee…at all. I was able to achieve 45 degrees of passive flexion through a supine exercise, but the swelling and tightness make it anatomically impossible to bend the knee further. My ortho said I need to think past this and just bend the fucking thing. I’m not sure I feel the same way, but regardless I’m pushing myself.
Nutrition
Over the last two days, I finally got my normal appetite back. I think due to the harder drugs, I really had no interest in eating, but forced myself to eat anyway since I knew I would just get emaciated if I didn’t. Getting my appetite back made me feel like an animal again, needing fuel to go on the hunt. In this case, the “hunt” is just doing my PT and mustering the energy to walk around on crutches.
In terms of meds, I stopped taking the Oxycodone, but will take one more Meloxicam tonight just to be safe. I took off all the ace bandaging and the gauze, so all I see now are the white butterfly strips covering up 3 different wounds with dried blood that has set into place over the last few days. Figured the Meloxicam might help with any last bit of inflammation that’s taking place.
Everything Is Slower
And I mean everything. From taking showers, to getting ready to leave the apartment, I think about wrapping my knee up, putting on the brace, getting the crutches, putting on shoes, etc. All these actions I normally take for granted now have 10 or 20 steps involved.
I remember Day 1, just getting to pee was the biggest ordeal. First I had to get the crutches to get to the bathroom which was only 5 feet away. My dad had to help with making sure I wouldn’t piss on my shorts, and I had to position my body in such a way that I could actually pee while holding onto the crutches while pointing things a certain way. Everything is slow because all I think about are angles. Angles of how my hands and feet need to occupy the space to support my 200lb body. I think about how my body needs to contort to sit on a type of chair or any surface.
It’s more tiring from a mental perspective, since you can’t just sit on the fucking toilet anymore to drop a deuce. I have to think about how I’m going to prop up my leg on some object so that I don’t prop up my right butt cheek too high from dropping bombs.
This is getting a little outside of the recovery process, but I think mentally recovering from this injury is just as important as all the physical stuff. There have been times when I was down, where everything sucked, and I’m sweating just to raise my foot one centimeter off the ground. I’m glad I read about all the psychological aspects of this injury, because for better or worse, it prepared me for the first few days of absolute misery.
Got in the best day of rehab so far, doing 4X12 leg lifts with relatively little pain (3/10). Only took fish oil and glucosamine/Chondroitin for supplements. Tried passive flexion and was able to get to around 45 degrees which is a lot more than I expected. Since there’s still a bit of swelling, getting the flexion is pretty tough so have been icing in hopes that the swelling will go down to get ROM.
Also did a little bit of walking (with brace locked):
Day 3 the pain definitely has subsided, and the swelling has gone down as well. I still feel a lot of tightness near the patella, especially when I try to tighten my quad. Still was not able to do a straight leg lift. What I was able to do is bend my left leg, and sort of lift my right leg using my body which is not the same as a leg lift. Biggest hurdle was getting over the pain over the patella when I try to tighten and lift the entire leg.
Day 4 I told myself I had to get the leg lift done and spent most of the morning working on tightening the quad despite the patella pain (which has also gone down). It was a struggle, as I was only able to get my foot off the ground for a few centimeters. Over 30 minutes, I moved on up to one foot, to the point where I could actually do a normal leg lift without having to rest my leg on the floor due to fatigue and atrophy. Getting to do these leg lifts was a big step in the rehab for me since I know that my quad is now slightly working.
Rehab
Total Time Day 3: 1.5 hours, started at 11:55AM
Did all the normal exercises and didn’t feel that different from Day 2 in terms of strength, but pain was not as strong. Still no flexion yet but will be working on that on Day 4 (today).
Total Time Day 4: 45 minutes, started at 10:15AM
Biggest accomplishment today was the straight leg lift as mentioned above. Now I have the confidence of lifting my leg when getting onto a chair, lifting the leg onto another chair, and just using my quad muscle more often than using my arms to lift the leg up and down from surfaces.
Videos of other exercises:
Meds
I haven’t taken any Oxycodone since Day 2, and stopped taking Melixocam Day 3. As per b-reddy’s manual, I’ve avoided taking the hard drugs as much as possible to prevent addiction in the worst case scenario, and just having a healthy stomach. I started taking supplements Day 3 and will continue with the rest of the rehab. This is what my Day 3 looked like:
9:30AM – Fish oil
10:00AM – 2 Glucosamine/Chondritin/MSM
11:00AM – 1 Melixocam (no more starting Day 4)
11:50PM – 1 Ibuprofen (no more starting Day 4)
Medley of pills and supplements. Hard shit on the right Oxycodone/Melixocam).
Pain started setting in early on around 6AM, took some Ibuprofen to hopefully calm it down. Could sense the knee swelling up so decided to start icing to reduce swelling, although trying to avoid ice since it just numbs the pain. Also took one Meloxicam to help with the inflammation.
The pain really started setting in around 5:30PM, and it was definitely the most pain I’ve felt so far in the last 36 hours. In addition to the patella pain, I had a fever of 101 degrees which made me feel like total shit. Took one more Oxycodone to hopefully relieve the pain (which it didn’t) but helped with the fever so that I could actually open my eyes and not be in a daze.
In general, everything near the patella is super tight and since the nerve block has completely wore off, when I stand up blood rushes down my leg and it feels like my leg is about to burst.
1:00AM – Took one Oxycodone (13 hours past nerve block) to block out pain
6:30AM – 1 Ibuprofen
9:15AM – 1 Ibuprofen, started icing
11:25AM – 1 Meloxicam for inflammation
3:50PM – 2 Ibuprofen
6:00PM – 1 Oxycodone
Rehab
Total Time: 1.5 hours, started at 11:30AM
Manual Massage
5 minutes
Nerve block winding down so was able to feel sensation in abductors/adductors; hamstrings also activated
Passive Extension
15 X 10 seconds
Pain: 5/10
Hurts on the way up when bending knee
Quad Sets
15-20 reps
Pain: 5/10, considerable pain near patella when contracting near patella
Much better activation compared to Day 1, still only at 50% due to pain
Patellar Mobilization
Pain: 6/10, definitely feels tender near patella
Can feel blood flow when gently pushing down on patella
Sitting Hamstring Stretch
15 reps
Pain: 4/10
Much more difficult due to pain behind knee when sitting up
Plantar flexion/Dorsiflexion
15 in each direction
Pain: 7/10
More difficult compared to Day 1 due to pain behind knee
Standing Abduction
4 X 12
Pretty easy but difficult due to pain shooting down leg when standing up
Straight Leg Raise
Couldn’t do it, too much pain in patella when contracting quad to lift leg
Calf Straightening
15 reps
Pain on back of knee during dorsiflexion
Toe Grabs
15 reps
Pain: 3/10
Done sitting down, slight pain on back of knee during contraction
getontheline 