Re: Knee surgery progress report
that’s great advice! scott, it’s great to hear from you as always. i’m glad you are doing well.
-eric
Thanks Matt. We need to get the group together when we are all able. Since Scott S. and Kenny have their thumbs back, if you guys get together to ride sometime let me know and I might follow along on the mtb and take pictures.
Thanks Eric, I hope you are doing some good riding. Feel free to give me ride reports, I can handle it.
Cyber, they had me to 120 deg on the CPM machine 12 hours after surgery and for 2 weeks after. I rode the stationary bike with the seat high at first, but now I am at about 130 deg or so, and pedaling is no problem. I was pretty lucky I guess. Also, riding after the injury for 2 days at Cal MUni, with my knee stiff and swollen, showed me what I could endure and it made it easier to push past the pain in therapy. Comparatively, it wasn’t that bad.
Scott
Good news Scott. Thanks for posting.
It's good to hear from you too Jason.
_ Frank
Thanks for the nice comments everyone! You made me feel better! This group is truly special.
The doc’s also talking about maybe wanting to do an HTO (high tibeal osteotomy) next to realign the bone angles to lessen future damage. Has anyone had that? I gather that’s a much bigger deal, and I’m not sure I want to do that until I see how this “fix” works out.
Jerry
Jerry,
I don’t know anything about that, but you can probably learn something about it from some of the knee forums on the web. One that I found helpful was Bob’s ACL Kneeboard. Besides the forum there is also a library of articles there. Good luck!
Scott
Re: Re: Re: Re: Knee surgery progress report
You guys with the Darvocet can send it to me. I have a couple of chem labs and we dispose of chemicals regularly. I know how to “dispose” of your problems for you.
Disclaimer – The following IS NOT MEDICAL ADVICE, just a little sharing of experiences to consider asking your doctor about.
I haven’t seen any mention of stretching in this thread. I’m sure it’s common sense to many, but it’s worth pointing out if it might help an over-anxious recuperater. Stretching is probably ten times more important during rehab. If the injured area is not stretched well before being stressed, it’s easier to overstrain it and set yourself back. And when things stiffen up after the exercise, you are much more prone to re-injury.
Stretching is easy to forget. The re-injury is quite a bit easier to remember.
After knee surgery, consider biking instead of unicycling for rehab, followed by knee bends until you know the knee is strong. It’s easy to accidentally exert too much force on the knee when you have to prevent falling off backwards. This is when the leg is more collapsed and has less strength and less leverage. Instinct and/or adrenaline will likely take over to prevent a crash, and by the time you realize it, your newly stitched ligament may be torn again, especially if you ignored the previous paragraph.
JPCycler – Sounds like an external fixation device. This is an external adjustable bar mounted to your leg via screws that are threaded into the bone – two above the break and two below the break. This is NOT fun. It may be necessary if the alignment is bad enough. There is much less blood supply in the lower leg, which I have been told inhibits the healing process. Bone stimulators are often used on the tibia and fibula (at great cost) because of this healing problem. When the stimulators don’t work, the options are less than appealing.
Careful Greg, I have heard that overuse of painkillers can lead to posting pictures of oneself in their wife’s swimwear. 
Jeff, You are right about the importance of stretching, and about how it is often neglected. I don’t like stretching and it is sometimes hard to make myself do it when the sun is going down and I want to get a ride in before dark.
As for the unicycle dismount scenario, the collapsing onto a weak leg in the bent position is a possibility and could do damage, but I think the even more dangerous situation is that of hyperextension. When your leg is hyperextended, it is at it’s most vulverable for twisting and causing ligament damage, especially ACL. This is how I tore my ACL in the first place. I was just riding in a parking lot and started doing some 3-point turns, of sorts. I would ride forward, stop, ride backward in a tight 180 turn, and ride out forward again. After doing several of these smoothly, something happened during the backward part and I dismounted to the left rear of the uni. I extended my left leg back to catch myself, landed flat footed with Dually firmly stuck to hot asphalt, and my body continued to rotate to the left. I heard and felt a distint “POP”. Many people get the same injury from stepping off a curb or stepping in a hidden hole in a grassy field.
When I start unicycling again I will probably set my knee brace so that it prevents me from completely extending my leg, because with a little bend your knee is in a much more twist resistant position, and of course better able to absorb the landing. Also, though there is a lot of controversy about the effectiveness of knee bracing, most agree that preventing hyperextension is what they do best. And, a functional knee brace can provide some resistance to tibial rotation (if firmly attached to lower leg) in the flexed position, but almost none when fully extended because the upper half of the brace will simply rotate around the thigh.
Scott
Edit: Jeff I realize now that I probably misinterpreted what you meant by “to prevent falling off” but I think everything still applies.
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Knee surgery progress report
I think I have a good bit left Greg from when my neck broke my fall.
Ouch! That hurts just to read about. The hyperextension and the twist & pop. No experience with either, fortunately. But I’m not grown up enough to presume that I never will.
Happy healing.
[hands firmly over ears, making loud LA LA LA LA LA sound…]
I
Don’t
Want
To
Think
About
That
LOUD
Popping
Sound
!
[hands still firmly over ears, making loud LA LA LA LA LA sound…]
Unibiker: It doesn’t actually hurt that much to tear the ligament. One minute of sharp pain, then a dull ache for a week or so. The real pain is getting it all sorted out again. Pushing for the first two weeks of physical therapy as Scott did takes real guts.
I realized that physical therapy might be painful when I noticed the fingernail gouges in the ceiling of the therapy room, and the gleeful cackling as the therapist heard she had a new patient in room 3 …
Scott, just a new guy checking in, glad the surgery went well and that the mending has begun in earnest.
I blew out the ACL on my left knee while skiing, and I remember the distinctive (close your ears guys) pop as well. The doc that did my surgery is known to be one of the best in Atlanta and I am very satisfied with the outcome.
Like you, I had the hamstring graft, and 4 years after the surgery my left knee is now stronger than the right. Keep pushing the flexion and extension, I didn’t and now the range of motion is about 95 percent or so - not 100% . Only noticeable when doing deep knee bends.
Best of luck on the knee rehab!
Welcome, Steve, and thanks for the encouraging words.
It is harder to continue working on the ext and flex once they get to the “usable” point, but I am staying on it. Glad you had good results from your surgery.
Scott
Sorry about the graphic description, I knew it would be painful for some to read.
You are right about how it feels, except that in my case there was the added element of extreme pain caused by the fact that California MUni Weekend was 3 weeks away and I had made all of my travel arrangements and I had been very much looking forward to going to my first such event. I actually blurted out the word California seconds after it happened.
Solution: Pop? I didn’t hear any pop!
Scott
Hi Scott,
Thanks for sharing the update…I’m glad to hear of the progress you’ve made since the surgery (but also sorry that the fall I watched at Rockville took you to that place).
From looking at your recovery timeline, I’m guessing we won’t be seeing you at Moab this March. Our loss, and you’ll be missed if that’s the case.
So now that you have a little downtime, maybe it’s a good opportunity to commercialize those rockin’ carbon-fibe handles you designed. I know I’ll three “righties” off your hands any time.
Best wishes for your recovery.
Tom
Tom,
Thanks for the kind words. No, I will not be at Moab. I would have loved to go, but to be honest I doubt I could have even without the injury. It is definitely on my list of future events. My goal now is to train to be at a higher level of strength and endurance than I was pre-injury, by this years Cal Muni Weekend. I am hoping that making that my focus will keep me content while riding more cautiously and doing less technical trail riding than I would normally do while I am in the high risk months of recovery.
To clarify, the fall you saw me take was a reinjury of the above described ACL snap that happened 3 weeks prior. My knee was very weak and would have required the same surgery regardless of whether I had gone to Cal Muni or not. I was lucky that I did not do more damage in the second incident, though. Knowing what I know now, I might still have gone, but I would have at least been fitted with a serious knee brace like I have now.
As for what to do with my downtime, it turns out there isn’t any, really. I had to play catch-up for the work I missed, and rehab is a full time job for a while. I have to work out a lot, and now that I can ride a bike, I am spending as many hours doing those things as I would normally muni.
I am just now getting back to the uni product development work, and you are on the list of people to notify when I have something ready. I am hoping to have a first run of handles in a couple of weeks, but it depends on the demands of my non-uni customers, unfortunately.
Scott
A testimonial to getting it done early, before the leg atrophies. I waited a year for the surgery and had significant athletic down time.