posted Oct-19-2006 04:50 PM            

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posted Oct-19-2006 10:19 PM               

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posted Oct-20-2006 01:32 PM               

Six months after my surgery I was cleared for all activities, I did not take up running until about two years after my surgery. I was very anxious to get back into skiing the first season although I did not feel fully recovered until the following season a year and a half later.

While working out I would usually do about and hour of cardio work on a machine followed by weight training. One day I was strolling through my athletic club and on a whim decided to enter a marathon. The running club had a table set up and just my luck , 300 new spots had opend up for Grandma's marathon in Duluth, MN.

Recently, I finished my fourth marathon on Sunday Oct.1st and went out and ran my fifth on Saturday Oct 14th less than two weeks later. I'm feeling good now and looking forward to my next race.

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posted Oct-21-2006 04:40 PM               

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posted Oct-23-2006 11:02 AM            

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posted Oct-25-2006 08:19 AM            

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posted Oct-25-2006 02:54 PM               

quote:

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Originally posted by AuntFeffie:
3 months post op. Found my knee and shin had edema with my skin becoming very tender and flaky increasingly as the day went on yesterday. Iced my knee for awhile last night and it seems much better this am, but it feels very sore and stiff as I try to fully extend and fully bend. Wonder if adding leg extension/curl on a weight bench did something. Realizing that ice is still so very important. Should I still be icing every day? How long have you all used ice for just regular activities? I see my OS tomorrow and had been looking forward to it before yesterday, now I am nervous.

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Hey AuntFeffie...dont b discouraged....the more active u get with ur knee the stiffness and the soreness will come n go..just keep on icing it...i am 4 months post op..just got back last week from a long trip ..went to india to c my parents..went exactly when i was 3 months post op...did a lot of walking there on uneven terrain ...with my brace on...was there for three weeks..came back in one pc..loll..saw my pt on mon..he re evaluated me...90 % of my strength is back on the operated leg....he has put me in the advance therapy progg..we have started wid my sports related exercises and plyometric exercises etc..i still get stiff at times and also when the weather changes...so dont b discouraged..take one day at a time..U R DOING REALLY GREAT....keep it up...

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posted Oct-25-2006 06:18 PM               

quote:

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Originally posted by Deluxehorsehitter:
AAARRRGGHH!
Geez it seems like everyone has had a run of bad luck lately.

I was doing lunges in therapy and did "something" to my knee, now it feels like a knife is being jabbed in it every time I bend it. The pain is directly under the scar.
I was feeling so good and now I can barely walk up and down stairs (which I do constantly at work-over 106 steps every half hour). I had the ACL reconstruction and a "bucket handle" repair on my meniscus, now my knee pops ALL the time.
Just when I thought it was going good.....

Stay safe and healthy everyone.

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Hey Deluxehorsehitter:...how r u...we never heard back from u after this posting...hope ur knee is ok....??? whats going on with u..?? did u see ur OS...pls keep us posted with ur progress.....

some have success because they r destined to but most of them have success becoz they r determined to and we r one of them....

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posted Oct-26-2006 10:00 AM            

I've heard of ACL patients who have no pain a couple weeks after the injury, but my knee never stopped hurting - probably because of the meniscus tear. By the time I had surgery (3 months after the injury), I was completely out of shape, because I'd been trying to stay off my bad knee to minimize the pain. In retrospect, putting off the surgery was probably a mistake.

I had surgery 4 weeks ago - they repaired the meniscus, and reconstructed the ACL using a graft from my patellar tendon. Post-surgery was a little worse than I thought it would be. The first couple days I was just in a bit of a daze (maybe the anesthesia aftereffects?). The pain was pretty controllable with the oxycontin and percocet I was on, but those narcotics left me feeling pretty dopey, and had some other unpleasant side effects. I ended up being out of work for 3 weeks - I'd originally thought it would be 1 or 2 weeks since I have a desk job, but it ended up being 3 weeks before I felt good enough to go back to work. I did CPM 6 hours a day for those 3 weeks, but wasn't allowed to go past 90 degrees because of the meniscus repair.

Progress at PT has been slow. The post-injury PT was easy, but the post-surgery PT has been tough. I think one of the biggest reasons for the difference is that I was in good shape when I got injured, but I was completely out of shape by the time I had surgery. I couldn't even do straight leg lifts without help from the PT! I just did my first straight leg lifts with no help yesterday, 4 weeks after surgery. The PT says that part of that is that I had a more difficult surgery than some ACL patients, because I didn't use a cadaver graft. I did lots of quad sets, and did the "Russian stim" with quad sets to try to build the quad back up to the point that I could do the straight leg lefts.

I'll admit I've been a little worried about the meniscus repair. I'm glad it looked repairable, because it would be nice to have the whole meniscus... but if the repair doesn't work, I'm not looking forward to another surgery. It sounds like different OS's have different protocols for recovery from meniscus repair. My protocol is:
-Full weight bearing right away as tolerated
-leg brace locked in straight extension for 1.5 weeks when walking
-After 1.5 weeks, leg brace not locked when walking
-Not allowed to bend knee more than 90 degrees for first 4 weeks
-From 4-6 weeks, I can do active flexion greater than 90, but not passive (which means the PT can't try to force it to bend more than 90, I can only bend more than 90 if I can do it with my own muscles).
-No running for 3 to 4 months

2-3 weeks after surgery, I was still sometimes having the pain that I'd come to associate with the torn meniscus. Within the last week or so, I'm not having that kind of pain very often - so I'm hoping that's a good sign that the meniscus is healing. Does anyone else have anecdotes about their meniscus repair? When did you get to pain free? When do you figure out whether it's healed, or whether the repair failed and it's torn again?

Thanks for reading, and thanks for sharing all your stories!

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posted Oct-27-2006 05:02 PM            

I will get fitted for my custom brace on Wednesday 11/1. My OS was not that "hip" on the orthotics idea. My PT wants to sell me them. I have heard from one of you on this. Any other thoughts from anyone?

dc76. Don't worry. My PT had to help me initially, too, on the leg lifts especially since I was non weight bearing for close to 6 weeks (I usually say 30 days, but that was the initial thought). I also was 'fitted' with a take home electrical impulse machine for a month, since the 2-3 times each week at PT was not enough. I really think that helped, because my quad just above the knee was just not firing and that is why I was closer to 6 weeks non weight bearing rather than the intial 30 days. However, with continuing to do the exercises at home diligently, the impulse machine (not sure its exact name), PT, walking, etc. things got better more quickly.

This is a continual self-talk process. The more we 'beat ourselves up' the more likely we will do something impatiently and set ourselves back. Use all our stories for encouragement, but measure your own progress from where you were X number of weeks ago. I stopped looking back a couple days, because I would not see much progress. But when I see someone I have not seen in a few weeks, I do indeed see how far I have come!

I am grateful for this site, because I don't have anyone in my life going through anything similar. It is nice to know that I will run again someday. I will get stronger. So will you!!

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posted Oct-28-2006 05:19 PM            

My OS didn't know about the 2 meniscus tears until the surgery, they didn't show up on my MRI. One of the tears was old per my OS. I'm convinced I tore my meniscus or did something a few years ago when I took a nasty fall skiing. I also have tendonitis in both my knees from running too much. A few years ago I actually had a bad flare up from running and had to do a stint of PT (nothing showed up on my MRI then and this was after my nasty skiing accident) which is when they diagnosed the tendonitis. At that time I cut my milage in half – down to the 25-30 miles a week, I learned stretches from PT, the importance of stretching as well as listening to my body. I hadn’t had a bad flare up since. My knee hasn't been the same since the ski accident but I just thought I was getting older...

So as I said, since I had more free time I thought I’d pick up soccer again. I was worried about my knee but decided if it didn’t go well I wouldn’t continue to play. Well, the soccer really brought out the instability b/c during my 1st week/game my knee almost gave out and swelled right up. I was able to finish the game but I was playing very cautiously. I went and saw an orthopedic Dr. (in the same practice as my OS, I changed to my OS b/c he specializes in sports med) and he couldn't tell me much other than to take it easy but to start going back to my normal activities when I thought I could. If I continued to have a problem after 2 weeks come back and we’d do an MRI, an X-ray did not show anything. I had tons of swelling and pain which prevented me from running and doing some other normal activities but in two weeks I was back to normal and running like nothing happened so I gave soccer another try - I tore my ACL... The funny thing was I was just starting to feel like my knee was going to be ok when I was sprinting for a ball - I heard a pop and hit the ground b/c my knee gave out. I did 5 PT sessions before my surgery to help w/ the inflammation of my knee since my OS didn’t want me going in to surgery like that.

I had a lot of pain after the surgery but only for a few days but mostly due to all the swelling. I went off the pain meds after I think 3 or 4 days because I was sick of the headaches and being nauseous and it didn’t really help all too much. I still had a lot of pain but I managed it somewhat w/ Advil and I just dealt w/ it rather than the nausea. I had my surgery the Friday going into Labor Day weekend. I was driving (w/ my straight leg brace) the following Thursday, and back to work that following Friday b/c I was going stir crazy - keeping my leg elevated of course.

Dc76 - Our protocol was pretty much the same, I was in the knee immobolizer for the 1st 2 weeks. (I starteded going to the gym in week 2 to lift my upper body.) I was off crutches maybe a week and a half after the surgery while I was still in the immobilizer and haven't touched the crutches since. I was in the Bledsoe brace for just under 4 weeks w/ restriction to 90 degrees. At PT he had me at 90 degrees w/ his assistance (not fun) by week 3 ½ I think. We’ve been pushing for more than 90 since after week 4. I'm very slowly making progress in being able to bend my knee farther and farther but I'm having a lot of scar tissue, etc that I'm having to work out on the bike and in PT. My PT actually said to me yesterday, at this time I could normally start light jogging but b/c of my circumstances I am not close to that.

I don’t know what to tell you about the pain. I’ve had very little pain since the surgery. And the pain I did have after surgery I felt was from swelling and not to do w/ my meniscus. I think some of the pain I had initially when I was trying to bend my knee might have been due to the meniscus work but that pain I haven’t experienced in a couple weeks. All I can say is keep it up. As my PT keeps saying be as aggressive as I can w/in the limits the he and the Dr. give me but that my knee isn’t going to fall off.

My OS and PT seem to be very progressive, they are both on the younger side so I think that makes a difference. Just be thankful, many people I’ve talked to w/ torn meniscus couldn’t weight bear or bend their knee for 6+ weeks – can you imagine? I did ask my Dr. about his approach to my recovery w/ the meniscus vs. what I’ve heard from others and my OS doesn’t treat meniscus repairs any different than an ACL. He actually didn’t even put the meniscus repair and removal on my PT script, he said there is some controversy to his approach.

I’ve been doing the bike a lot to work out the scar tissue, I walk on the treadmill (at speed 2.5 to 3), I do the elliptical which is a lot like the bike for me in trying to work out the scar tissue and today for the 1st time since the surgery I did the stair climber. I’m allowed to use resistance/levels w/in reason on the cardio machines. I’m also doing some light leg lifting – the leg press, leg extension, the seated hamstring curl and calves. Right now we are just working on gaining back my strength, my balance, the mobility in my knee w/ trying to work out the kunk in my knee which affects my gait and me being able to bend my knee farther back.

Sometimes I get frustrated, tired, and I feel down but I’m still going at it and willing to put myself through whatever is necessary to get my knee back to normal. I’m still shocked at the muscle atrophy. Good luck to everyone and just keep plugging along!

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posted Oct-30-2006 10:44 AM            

Not only am I not driving, I'm not even sitting in the passenger seat - for the same reason... my leg doesn't bend enough to sit comfortably in the passenger seat. So I sit in the back seat, with my right leg lying across the back seat, while my wife drives me around like a chauffeur - to and from work, to and from PT appointments. She's been a very good sport about it, but we'll both be a lot happier when I'm driving again.

Good to head that you have a similarly aggressive protocol for the meniscus repair (full weight bearing early). I was a little worried that the aggressive protocol would increase the chances of the repair not working, but our protocol seems to be increasingly accepted. With the atrophy I had with this protocol, I can't imagine what 6 weeks straight / no weight bearing would've been like.

I've seen multiple people talking about using the exercise bike to work out scar tissue, because the scar tissue limits flexion. Which scar tissue are you talking about? The small scars from the scopes? Bigger scars from where grafts were taken? Or is there other scarring on the inside of the knee from the procedure? Or all of the above?

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posted Nov-05-2006 04:38 PM               

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posted Nov-05-2006 08:38 PM               

My surgery was about 6 weeks after my injury and I was weight training up until the night before my surgery. I was shown scope pictures of the scar tissue connections that had formed inside my knee during those 6 weeks. The OS cleaned out that scar tissue before he installed the new allograft. I started my PT 10 days after my surgery. I'm not entirely sure if the pain was from the scar tissue only or if the OS had installed the new allograft really tightly. I'm doing good now logging 60 miles per week during my peak marathon training, the only time I'll take ibuprofen is before a 20 miler.

kpoppers7 - I'm 35 years young and I take glucosamine daily, although its only marketed to older individuals. You may want to ask your regular doctor or a good pharmacist. I just pick whatever is on sale at Costco.

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posted Nov-06-2006 09:25 AM            

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posted Nov-09-2006 06:21 PM               

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posted Nov-10-2006 09:23 AM               

quote:

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Originally posted by leapingleah16:
hey everyone, i had acl surgery four months ago (cadaver) and i have a few questions. i tried going jogging today but it felt very strange, like i could feel everything inside of my knee moving. I dont want to reinjure myself and i just want to know if this is normal. i have been running cross country and track since 7th grade and i want to be in track this year, so this is pretty important to me

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Hey leapingleah16 ,

i am also 4 n a half months post surgery..{ hamstring }..i have recently started jogging on the treadmill..i jog for like 15 to 18 min n brisk walk for like 20 min..every other day...i am wearing my knee brace while am on the treadmill..my knee feels fine except it gets really tired n sore after wards which i think is normal....r u wearing a knee brace when u r jogging ???

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posted Nov-10-2006 04:46 PM               

so it is not normal to be able to feel the inside of your knee when you are running??

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posted Nov-10-2006 05:56 PM            

quote:

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Originally posted by leapingleah16:
yesterday was my first time running since like five months ago and no i odnt have a knee brace..is that bad?

so it is not normal to be able to feel the inside of your knee when you are running??

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I am 3 1/2 months post op and have not started running yet. I was told to wait to 5-6 months for my specific situation. However, I probably would not try it without my brace (which comes in on the 20th. Yeah!) I am going to work on an elliptical for the first time tomorrow (I have been using the bike for my endurance and the treadmill for walking). I have not felt 'things moving around' in my knee, so I am thinking that you should check with your OS about that. Also, don't push too quickly. While this is a long process and seems like it will take forever, taking things slowly will help you not to go backwards with a re-injury or compensating injury. One of my goals is to get into tennis shape by the summer...doesn't quite seem possible from where I am right now, but when I look back, I have made a lot of progress in the past couple months, so....I am hopeful.

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posted Nov-11-2006 03:55 PM            

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posted Nov-13-2006 10:18 PM               

I swam today, it was so nice. Its been 2 months almost exactly since operation. I didnt realize how tough swimming laps was...or maybe its just that I'm horribly out of shape. I aqua jogged too (floation device around waist while jogging in place), my knee popped alot but it was nice to feel like I was running even though it was in a pool.

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posted Nov-15-2006 07:07 AM               

hello AuntFeffie,

elliptical is the next best thing to treadmill..i started using it since one month after my surgery....so u go girl...r u doing any squats lunges stc..coz my pt had given me a home prog in which i can do all this stuff on my own...i am 4.5 months post surgery now....i am still going for pt..they're making me do all kind of jumps now... agility drills and my pt has also started making me do my taekwondo kicks..but with my brace on........well i just wanted to tell u guys tht i am 40 yrs old....tore my acl..had the surgery di=one on june 22 using my hammy....and i am progressing really fine..so all u out there r mostly younger than me..pls dont lose hope..take one day at a time and make sure like AuntFeffie said take things slowlyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy...

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posted Nov-15-2006 09:15 AM            

Hope you all are doing your exercises! I think of you a lot when I want to procrastinate, and that gets me going right away. God Bless.

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posted Nov-18-2006 10:58 AM               

quote:

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Originally posted by AuntFeffie:
Niana,
Thank you for your response. I am with you...I am 44. I am learning ACL recovery is ACL recovery regardless of age in many respects, but there are some unique differences, too. I need to realize I am not in my 20's, and reinjury is more costly now and not only in $. I stopped going to PT this month, since it seemed that we were doing all that I do at home anyway. It was good to read what you are doing, because I have added squats (not lunges, though) on my own, working out with great equipment here at home and at our community center. My brace comes in on Monday, and I am a bit leary about when to start jogging. My OS had said to wait until 5-6 mos post op (almost 4 months now). I guess I will wait until my next visit with him in December. My biggest challenge now is the inertia I am experiencing and the energy it is taking to turn it all around. My total fitness level has dropped a lot since my injury on June 4th despite all the concentration on my exercises, and my eating habits are not great. It is interesting to me how hard this is to turn back around, but I will. Once fully headed in that direction, it will be easier to maintain. This really is a great opportunity to re-evaluate what I was doing prior to injury/surgery, make changes, and really get all facets right! I am looking forward to it, actually.

Hope you all are doing your exercises! I think of you a lot when I want to procrastinate, and that gets me going right away. God Bless.

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Hey AuntFeffie,

i just wanted to let u know tht i saw my doc n PT on thurs..both of them have shown me the green flag..I CAN GO BACK to TAEKWONDO ...can u blv this am not even 5 months post op...i told them i will go bak in jan..need to still keep on doing my workouts to make this leg stronger...its now more of a mental fear than physical....so alll u out there..STICK TO UR PT...i worked out at home...at the gym n wid my physical therapist and my leg is back to normal..almost back to normal....so aunt feffie u n me both can show every body tht age has nothing to do with all this ..it is the mental strength ..strong will power n the determination to getbak to normal...good luck to u ..i know u will also come back stronger than before..

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posted Nov-26-2006 02:48 PM            

I hope everyone is recovering well.

I've recovered quite nicely from my lunging(sp?) mishap, doctor told me to stop going to p.t. and do LOTS of leg lifts. Seems to be working, knee feels great.

We have a new foster baby so I've been really busy and haven't had time to do a whole lot of internetting. I will say that I'm putting everyone of you on my "Up and Running Well" list to Santa.

Have a safe and happy Holiday Season.

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