I tore my ACL and medial meniscus cartilage in my left knee playing soccer. I opted not to have surgery and instead rehabbed it. I was running up to 30 minutes as well as cycling and everything felt normal until one day shortly before Xmas I woke up with a swollen knee. It never got better, so I finally went through with surgery to reconstruct the ACL and repair the damaged cartilage. This is my story.
Sunday, February 22, 2009
Day 11 - Rehab is my life
I've now settled into a routine that begins with my rehab exercises in the morning, followed by more quad strengthening throughout the day whenever I have a free moment and then ending with another set of rehab exercises at night. The rehab routine right now consists of quad contractions, then heel slides (bending my knee and using a band to pull my heel as close to my butt as possible), leg raises, and then more leg raises while laying on my side and back. Then I do hamstring stretches, followed by calf raises while standing on one leg. The whole routine takes about 20-30 minutes. That's at least an hour per day and probably more when you factor in the exercises I'm squeezing in throughout the day. That's actually down from the time I put in during the first week or so after surgery, where I spent at least 3 hours per day just in the CPM machine. So it really is true that if you're not prepared to commit yourself to the rehab exercises, you should probably not go through with the ACL reconstruction surgery in the first place.
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