MCL Injury

**Master_Magus** · 04-16-11, 08:48 PM

So a few months ago I hurt my MCL in my right knee and went to a Ortho doctor to get it checked out. He moved my knee in certain direction and then did a X-ray. After all that I was told that I stressed my MCL (a.k.a sprain my knee) and told if I did exercise that focus on the muscle around the knee I should be good. Well thats what I did for the past two months and I slowly got into basketball again. Then today it looks like I re-injured it again but nothing like the first time. I'm able to walk and everything but it just ache a little bit and will be going back to get a MRI on it and see what is going on. I just wanted to see if anyone else has injured their MCL and were able to get back into their normal activities.

**Toad** · 04-19-11, 11:11 PM

I tore my ACL playing volleyball. They had to put a dead guy's achilles tendon in there to replace it. I didn't play any sports for like 9 months since it takes awhile to get the muscle/stability back, but now it's strong as ever. Did they put you on physical therapy? My docs had me doing lots of exercise to build muscle above and below the knee, since that takes some of the strain off of the ligaments. If you are stuck off sports for a bit you should ask the doctor or a physical therapist what exercises you can do to strengthen the muscles around it, that won't hurt it. That helped me a lot and is good advice even if you don't have a sprained ligament.

**Savage** · 04-19-11, 11:19 PM

I had tendinitis, which is like micro tears in your knee. 6 weeks off football, some excersies, and now I'm perfectly fine.

**Master_Magus** · 04-20-11, 05:05 AM

From the first visit the doctor and I thought since it wasn't nothing major from the test he perform and x-ray, we decided that physical therapy wasn't needed since I can just do the excerise on my own. I think since I was playing about 3+ hours of basketball that day, my legs were getting tired and pretty much couldn't handle that much of a workout that soon. I'll know more once my go to the doctor on Tuesday and prob see if I can get a hinged brace for slowly getting back into sports.

**Master_Magus** · 04-26-11, 09:06 AM

Went for my follow up and the doc believes that it might be a torn ACL. Will be going to get a MRI on the knee this sunday but will have to wait until a week after that for the doctor to look at it since he is out that week (which sucks ass). So now I am likely looking at an ACL surgery and gonna suck not being able to play any sports for a long ass time.

Toad, how was the recovery process after surgery?

**Toad** · 05-05-11, 06:36 PM

Hey man, I just saw this thread again. When I got mine done I was off my feet for 2-3 days and then on crutches for another 1-2 days. By the end of the week I could walk a bit with the aid of a crutch and by the next week I was off them completely. If I had that part to do over again I'd be walking a few steps off and on during the day earlier than the 5th day, but would not overdo it. I overdid it on the 5th day and was walking a bunch, and then my knee swelled up a bunch. You could probably test out putting weight on it and taking baby steps with the aid of a crutch on that arm by day 3 or 4 though (ask your doctor).

I got a Continuous Passive Motion machine to use at my house. You sit down and rest your leg in it straight out, and then it bends your leg upwards at the knee by a specific amount. You can configure how many degrees it will bend it, and it's used to gradually get your leg bending all the way again. It's good to let it warm up a bit and then try to go 10 degrees or so per day to get flexibility back. An exercise bike was really good for that too after about a week.

Your leg loses a LOT of muscle, especially quad and upper calf. It loses it super quick... I think it's something relating to getting the incision and the replacement part put in place that makes your body automatically jettison the extra muscle. So one leg gets all small and the biggest thing is to get it back in shape. You won't be able to do weights for the first week or two (ask your physical therapist) but make sure you do the leg lifts/etc that the doctor tells you do, do that shit religiously so that you lose as little as possible because it takes awhile to pack it back on.

I got a cadaver achilles tendon as my replacement ligament. It feels great now, just like my other leg, and is super stable. Research and find a really good surgeon if at all possible (I went to a guy that used to do pro sports teams in the area) or at least someone you can find lots of good referrals for.

The pain isn't bad at all but it's very frustrating not being able to play sports that involve lots of running or pivoting for 8+ months. It takes a year or so for the new ligament to fully vascularize (get blood vessels through it to become fully a part of you) and for the bone graft to fully latch into your knee so you don't want to go apeshit. Pro sports players can do it because they build so much surrounding muscle that it takes the strain off the knee but you have increased chance of tearing it that way. So get ready for some serious workouts to build it back up! If you can get into cycling at all you might want to try that after a few months... biking is very low impact to the knee and is a great way to get back in shape. The act of pushing the pedal is easy even a week or two after surgery, but you probably don't want to go road biking (where you might have to stop suddenly and put odd angled pressure on the knee) for a month or so.

I'm kind of rambling here... if you have more questions just ask.

**Master_Magus** · 05-09-11, 09:20 AM

Just got back from the doctor this morning for looking at the MRI and seeing what damages there are. Found out that I tore my ACL and my menisci is damaged a little. So I will have to get surgery to be able to play any kind of sport. I will be doing the hamstring tendon acl reconstruction since my doctor highley recommended it.

**Toad** · 05-13-11, 10:46 PM

Ouch! That sucks man... I would definitely read up on the hamstring tendon ACL reconstruction before doing it though. I was 26 when I had mine redone. I played basketball, volleyball, and ran at the time and told my doctor. I did cadaver tissue and it went just fine. He said it would get up to 90% or so as strong as the original ACL and my knee feels perfectly normal. I come down on it in all kinds of crazy ways and never have cause for concern. Taking it from your hamstring is going to be a rougher recovery, possibly longer (I'm not sure exactly) and is going to mess around with your hamstring as well. I would definitely read up on it some more before ruling out cadaver tissue. They don't use a cadaver ACL, they use an achilles tendon (at least with me) and that shit feels rock solid. My other knee actually feels worse, because I messed up my hamstring a bit on that leg playing basketball!

Regarding the meniscus, when the surgery happens you will get blood in the knee and it will heal it up some. If it's a giant tear they will have to abrade it, but if it's just a nice painful groove along it then the blood will go a long ways towards healing that, possibly heal it completely. That's why you don't do ibuprofen after the surgery... to let the inflammation inside the knee happen since it winds up healing stuff in your knee.

Other random advice is to keep up with pain meds (i.e. alarm clock every 4 hours) for the first few days. Just obnoxious trying to get back to sleep when you've been sleeping weird and the pain medication wore off.

If you have any questions or want more boring knee surgery stories let me know.

**Master_Magus** · 06-28-11, 01:16 PM

Well Toad, the surgery was a success. Doctor actually used one strand of my hamstring and a cadaver to rebuild my ACL. With the meniscus, they were able to repair it without removing anything and said that both will be able to heal as normal. The pain meds were awful, only took them for two days then quit b/c they kept making me sick and weird thing is I haven't had any pain in my knees at all (both doctors were shock). Just finished with my first day of therapy and my initial range of motion is 96, which they told me was good but I'm not sure if they were trying to make me feel better. Can't wait until the 6 week mark so I can attempt to start walking without crutches.

**Toad** · 06-30-11, 07:13 AM

Ouch, 6 weeks on crutches? That's great that you don't have pain even without pain meds. Did they tell you to avoid ibuprofen? Does 96 mean 96 degrees? Glad to hear it went well. Good luck!