For those of you that do not know what happened last year, I would like to explain what happened and why I am now interested in ACLs. We were in gym class and I jumped in the air to catch a football and when I landed I felt a pop in my knee and I knew something was wrong. The next thing that I remember was me sitting on the bleaches with Mrs. Munoz, the old gym teacher, standing beside me asking what happened. I then explained the little bit that I knew about what just happened and then changed back into my uniform. I then was able to walk on my knee for the rest of the day. I went to the orthopedic doctor where he said that I most likely tore my ACL but he said that I had to get a MRI to confirm what truly happened. When I went back to the doctor he said that I did tear my ACL and I had to go to physical therapy if I wanted any chance of playing any of the basketball season last year.
I started going to physical therapy and I was able to start playing in basketball practices the end of December into the beginning of January, so I was able to play the second half of the season. While I was playing during the season, my knee popped out of place 4 different times, once during practice and the other 3 times in different games. When we told the doctor this, he said that I would most likely need to have surgery at the end of the season if this continues happening for the safety of my knee. I wasn’t sure that I was going to need to have the surgery because the last couple weeks of the season were going very well and my knee was doing great.
Then during our last game, a playoff game which we ended up losing by a couple of points, my knee popped out worse than it ever had before. It popped out with 10 seconds left and when someone looked at it they said I most likely dislocated it and it probably hurt so bad because it didn’t pop back in yet. This was the worst pain I have felt in my knee yet. After that happened, I couldn’t even walk on my left leg by myself for a couple of hours. This was the moment that we decided that I definitely needed to get surgery so my knee wouldn’t do this anymore. My surgery was scheduled for March 1st. I then restarted physical therapy and did it for about 3 months before taking a break during the summer since the insurance only give you a certain amount of physical therapy appointments. During the summer, I continued my exercises and I was also running. I have now resumed physical therapy and I am doing running, jumping, and some cutting to test my knee to make sure that I will be ready for the basketball season this year. I have almost run out of visits at physical therapy and they recommended that I go to Cool Springs in Bethel Park since they can continue my training and they have a bigger training facility that I can use.
The total recovery time from surgery to playing basketball is 9 months, so I will be ready to start playing around December 1! Even though I don’t exactly what happened when I tore my ACL, I now am much more knowledgeable and know what I should be doing to lower the risk of me hurting it again or hurting my right knee.
