It’s hard to believe that just one year ago I hurt my right knee playing netball. It was a career ending injury, I’ve never returned to netball since and we all know that I was going to be the next Liz Ellis (disclaimer – that is not entirely true, I was more likely to become Dumbo than Liz Ellis). I managed to tear my ACL (anterior cruciate ligament), the ligament which runs through the centre of the knee and connects your shin (tibia) with your thigh (femur). The ligament is largely responsible for the stability of the knee, and no doubt my long periods of playing netball had greatly stressed this ligament to the point where it could handle no more and ripped. It’s a common injury among netball players and participants of other sports requiring frequent changes of direction at high speed.
3 months later I had a knee reconstruction and began the long period of rehabilitation. I documented each day of my first week follwed by a few more regular updates discussing my progress. It’s been 7 months since my last update, and 9 months since the surgery.
Appearance wise my knee hasn’t changed too much. I know from previous accidents that I scar badly and it takes a LONG time for them to go away. In fact, my scars tend to turn into hypertrophic scars, red raised lumps. I have a scar on my left knee from when I sliced it open on a raised tile in a pool; I was 13 at the time. I’m now 25, and even after 12 years there are still pink bits on the scar. It became quite lumpy originally, but when playing soccer at school I copped a strong hit in the knee by the soccer ball causing my knee to swell. When it went down I was pleased to see my scar had been flattened out in the process.
The actual lines from the stitches have gone, and while my hypertrophic scarring has kicked in and made the long scar look a little bit lumpy, it’s also faded significantly in parts along the length of the scar. The fluro light makes the upper scars look a lot darker in the 9 months picture compared to the 2 months, but looking at them normally I wouldn’t say they’ve faded much at all. The scar on the very left of the picture (not quite visible on the 9 months picture) has a little bit of fading, but not much.
The fluro light made my knee look a lot whiter in the left picture!
With regards to movement, I’m happy to say that I’ve nearly regained full use of my leg again. I can now bend my knee to the same angle as my good leg, but there’s still quite a strength difference. I can notice it when I’m feeling a little bit tired, walking up or down stairs I’ll tend to compensate for my right knee a little bit. My physio has got me doing strengthening exercises in the gym 2 – 3 times a week to build up the muscles so hopefully this will go away in time. Last visit to the physio there was still a 4cm difference between my left and right thighs, so my right quads and hamstrings are getting quite the hammering in the gym in a bid to even it up.
A little over a month ago I was given the all clear to start running slowly in figure 8′s and changing directions, but it was only in the last 2 weeks that my physio told me to really start putting pressure on my knee. I haven’t been doing it as yet and I know I really need to get cracking on it. Until I was allowed to change directions I was still able to run, and have been working towards running 5km following the “Couch to 5k” running program. Now that I am able to put pressure on my knee I’ll be setting up some markers and running between them and getting used to changing directions.
I don’t expect to be seeing the physio for much longer; at this stage I’m only seeing him once every 6 weeks. The sports insurance from the netball courts that had covered all my physio has just run out (as they only pay for rehabilitation up to 12 months after the injury was sustained) and I’ve also reached the limit on coverage for physio services from my own personal health insurance. At $75 a pop to see the physio it’s not something I want to be paying often.
I’m not sure what my next few bench marks are, perhaps equal sized leg muscles? I guess I can almost say that it’s the end of this saga, and something I can put behind me. Still, it’s kinda sad that I even have a category on my blog specifically for discussing all the various injuries I sustain. Perhaps my next aim should stop hurting myself?
