Day 166 - I'm eating more blue M&Ms

It turns out that the dye used in blue M&Ms protects against crippling spinal cord damage in mice. It turns them blue, but that's a small price to pay to retain the ability to walk.

And I wonder what this dye might do for ligament tears? I'm headed out to buy a bag of blue M&Ms now.

Day 164 - Passed another test

I walked a St. Bernard today at the Washington Animal Rescue League, a place at which I volunteer. I didn't know it when I started out, but this led to another test of my knee.

These dogs are huge, but sweet. This one in particular, who has been given the fitting name Stonewall, has tremendous strength. Don't let the photo at the right fool you. Here's another angle to show you how big he is.



But once I got him out to the park, he was ok. At one point, I got him running and playing with me. And let me just stop here and say if amusement parks really wanted to build a scary ride, they should forget about roller coasters. Instead, invent a ride where a 200 lb St. Bernard is running full-speed at you. It doesn't matter what you do, you're doomed.

But Stonewall is true to his breed's temperament. He doesn't have a mean bone in his body. He would get close to me, but veer away at the last second and gracefully blow right by me without so much as harming a hair on my leg. But at one point, I tried to be too clever and jump behind a bench, sort of like a matador pulling his muleta away from a bull at the last second. Unfortunately, that was the exact direction Stonewall was going. So he sort of hit my leg --my bad knee. Luckily, it wasn't planted at the time. But I stumbled and caught myself using that leg. It was a good test of whether the new ACL had healed into the bones. It had, and it held.

Whew.

Later, while taking Stonewall back inside, I had to hold back all 200 lbs of his brute strength while another volunteer was walking some dogs by. I don't think Stonewall really wanted to get to the dogs, but under those situations with dogs who don't know each other, you can't take any chances, especially since Stonewall could demolish the whole building if he set his mind to it. Yet again, my knee held. That's no small feat, considering that apparently a St. Bernard once pulled more than 4,000 pounds!

Day 163 - Passed the test

Yesterday, I had my final one-legged hop test for my knee. I passed with flying colors. So I'm now cleared to resume all activities. Even soccer. I'll have to slowly ease into soccer, maybe just some running on a field first, dribbling a ball, shooting, etc. And I still need to strengthen my VMO, but all in all this was great news. But just to show the universe likes to keep things on an even keel, I was later stung by a wasp on my good knee. I have no idea why he stung me. I wasn't bothering him at all. It wasn't too bad though. It's a little sore and itchy today, but nothing I can't manage.

Anyway, I celebrated my test-passing with a beer. And since I missed the Thursday song, here's one to make up for it:

Day 160 - Back to the tape

My knee cap still isn't tracking properly, so I've resumed taping my knee. It helps a lot, especially going up and down stairs. I think one problem is that my VMO muscle is still a bit weak. So I'm hoping the tape will allow me to strengthen the VMO and get my knee cap back on track, literally.

But I may be trying to progress too fast or too soon. My physical therapist kept saying it can take a year after the surgery to fully get the knee back to feeling normal. As it is, I'm able to run and bike and carry out most normal day to day activities without a problem. So it may just take more time.

But I'll keep taping and hope it speeds things along.

Day 156 - Insane soccer Saturday

A compilation of amazing moves by some of the modern day greats (The end has a great clip of Maradona freaking out):

Day 154 - Leg song Thursday

What would summer be without a little Steven Tyler. Here's his band Aerosmith doing Falling in Love (Is Hard on the Knees) [great video, by the way]:

Day 153 - Rubbing me the wrong way

The edge of my kneecap has become sore and painful. I'm not sure if this is left over from the surgery or if this is due to the increased activity in recent weeks. But the way I've started treating it is something called transverse friction massage, which basically just means rubbing it with your finger back and forth perpendicular to the direction the ligament fibers run.

As you can see from the photo, the patella ligament runs across the knee cap. That's what's become inflamed and is the source of my soreness. To massage the sore spot, I have to put one hand on the top of my knee cap and push down to tilt up the bottom of the knee cap. Part of the ligament extends just under the lip of the knee cap, so by tilting it up, I can better access the sore bit and massage it with my finger.

I learned this technique from a previous physical therapist. My physical therapist has never mentioned it and may not even know about it. So it's a good idea to shop around and even switch physical therapists if your current one isn't helping. In my experience, they all seem to have different knowledge and preferred techniques, so one of them may know a method that can help your particular condition.

The transverse friction massage seems to be helping so far. It really made a difference when I previously used it during my rehab prior to the surgery, so I'm hoping I get similar results this go around.

Here's a nice overview of how to treat patella tendonitis. It briefly discusses the massage technique, if you're interested in learning more.

Day 152 - May the Force be with you

One improvement I've noticed recently is that my knee seems capable of generating more force, in running and especially jumping. I was doing some practice one-legged hopping yesterday to prepare for the final test in a couple of weeks, and my knee felt a lot more functional than it has since the surgery.

It's difficult to explain, but previously, it was like I wasn't able to generate as much springing action in my surgically repaired knee as with my other knee. I could still hop as far, but I really had to go through all sorts of contortions and effort to get my leg to land in the right place. And even then, something just didn't feel right, like things were out of sync and there just wasn't any power being generated.

But yesterday, for the first time, I felt like I was getting springing force and was able to easily hop the same distance on my surgically repaired knee as on my other leg. And according to a recent study, ACL reconstruction eventually allows the patient to produce as much force as he previously could. The researchers compared people who had undergone ACL surgery to people who had not and found no loss in function in the former group. The researchers concluded: "After ACL reconstruction, rehabilitated participants did not exhibit deficits in force production or reactive strength capabilities. Our results suggest that force production and reactive strength capabilities can be restored to levels comparable with the uninjured control limb..."

It seems only appropriate to end this post thusly: May the Force be with you.

Day 149 - Insane soccer tricks

Some of these are probably faked camera tricks, but it's still fun to watch. I'll consider myself recovered when I can do the flipping-around-with-the-ball-between-my-legs-and-then-shoot trick.

Happy Saturday:

Day 147 - Leg song Thursday

The knee felt pretty good the day after the long bike ride. It felt pretty good when I went for a run earlier today too. This was actually the first time my knee felt fresh right from the start. That's quite an improvement. I've usually just felt like I was plodding and struggling along. But today, I felt like I had jets. There's still a few tweaks of pain, and I really didn't want to push it past 25 minutes, but it definitely feels much better than it did when I first resumed running on the road.

Here's a classic from John Mellencamp: Get a Leg Up (it's really more about an impromptu threesome than legs, but it's close enough for me).

Day 145 - Tour de Knee

I rode my bike about one hour today. I only planned to go for about 40 minutes, but I was inspired by Lance Armstrong's amazing performance today at the Tour de France (For those who don't know, the 37-year-old guy erased a 40 second lead in the team time trial and missed donning the yellow jersey by just thousandths of a second).

So when I hit 40 minutes, I rode on. My knee felt OK at that point, so it seemed like a good idea. On the way back though, my knee was starting to ache a little, mostly around the bursitis area. It feels a little stiff now, but mostly OK. This may have been a bad idea, but we'll find out tomorrow.

Before I left, I rolled the hell out of my vastus lateralis. That seems to help, so I'll do more of that tonight. And hope that the knee feels pretty decent in the morning.

Day 143 - Tight

My physical therapist said I've got tight spots in my vastus lateralis. I told her to watch her language, but she was actually referring to one of the muscles in my quadriceps.

As you can tell from the photo, the vastus lateralis comes down and attaches to the outside of the knee cap. So if it's tight, it's going to pull the knee cap out of alignment, which is exactly what's happening to me.

So I'm rolling it and stretching in an effort to keep it loose. It seems to help, but I think it'll take a few days to a week of this to really make a difference.

But such is recovery from ACL reconstruction.

Day 142 - Happy Fourth

Day 140 - Leg song Thursday

Van Halen's Drop Dead Legs seems appropriate for summer and heading into the July 4th weekend.