The so-called "professionals" disagree with my MRI reading ... slightly. They're calling it a "high grade partial tear" of the ACL. I think I would rather it be a complete tear... this diagnosis puts me into something of a grey area to choose between surgical reconstruction and rehab without surgery. Given my age and activity level, surgery still seems like the most likely option.
So the next step is to have another examination by a doctor who specializes in ACLs. That will happen next Tuesday afternoon...
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4 comments:
Thanks for the update Brandon. We'll be praying for your (likely) surgery and recovery. Keep us posted!
Glad for the update. You gotta love those wordy dx's that really tell you what's wrong.
I love you Brandon and pray it will go well for you and that your knee will heal. The soccer world needs you!
I have kind of a buttload of personal experience with this. I tore my ACL playing a pickup game of football on the last day of gym class my Freshman year of high school. I didn't just tear it, I shredded it. It was going to be a complex reconstruction. And I couldn't have surgery on it for a year because they had to drill through the growth plates and they didn't want me to have one long leg and one short one. I finally got the surgery: a piece of my left leg's patella tendon grafted as my right leg's ACL. Then 5 months of physical therapy. Ugh.
3 years later, in a college production of Hamlet, I partially tore the reconstructed ACL in the same knee during the end-of-show fight scene. I talked to a lot of different "specialists" about it, figuring out what to do. Strangely, it was a conversation with Harding's basketball coach that made up my mind. He asked me how active I was, if I lifted weights, if I jogged a lot. I said yes to all. His response? "Then you don't need surgery. At least not until your activity level decreases considerably." Oh? Every doctor I saw said "operate, operate, operate" so why was this different? "All a doctor wants to do is get you on the operating table," he replied, like the old salty southern boy he was. "That's where they know how to fix things. But if your leg muscles are strong enough, they'll hold the knee together without the ACL." That seemed a little far-fetched, I said. He leaned in. "There are two guys playing on the basketball team RIGHT NOW that have torn ACLs. They have for a couple years now. No problems."
So I picked up some new leg exercises and haven't had a problem since.
It has everything to do with your level of activity, as you said. And a partial tear is probably out-patient surgery, they'll just scope you and you'll have to do a little physical therapy. Mine was not.
All I'm saying is, definitely explore your options. :)
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