The one year anniversary, Part One

When I began writing this it was a year to the day that I ruptured my anterior cruciate ligament. That was yesterday and now it’s a year to the date. I have been thinking about what I would post for a while as I knew this ‘celebration’ was coming up, but getting down in lucid sentences what’s been running through my head isn’t particularly easy.

I was playing mixed seven aside soccer, the kind where most guys seem to take out their domestic violence issues on the football field. This night there was one particular guy I ran afoul of, he was built to use his fists while I’m built to swing sticks. What happened was in no way his fault, contact sport has its perils. However, it was his push from behind that put me all out of kilter and ultimately resulted in my trip to the hospital.

When I think about it I still wince at the pain. As my knee gave out I was looking at my leg, at least I think I was as the knowledge that I had done something serious was with me before I heard the crack or felt the pain. Some rudimentary photoshop playing has arrived at what my leg kind of looked like at its moment of reconfiguration.

I was later told that I acted bravely, but I howled and swore a bit before immediately requesting an ambulance, swinging my head back and forth to try and clear it of pain.

I have broken an arm, a foot, probably fingers and toes and most likely my nose, but nothing prepared me for this.

At the time I refrained from crying. It wasn’t out of some show of bravado, I knew I had hurt myself, but the pain was too sharp, the want to know how badly I had hurt myself to pressing. As I calmed down some asshole who had gathered amongst the crowd of onlookers commented that I wouldn't be walking for two years. That made me cry a little and was when I tried to put on the brave face.

How I calmed down is worth noting, and many thanks go to the referee who helped me reign myself in. He cleared most everyone off, asked me again if I thought I needed an ambulance, and then told me to think of somewhere else. I remember now vividly the picture I brought to mind of a beach in Fiji. The colouring is kind of strange but it was simple and it worked. It is almost amusing that pain isn't anything more than a series of electrical impulses.

That was the end of the game. I went down in front of the other team’s goal but from the faces I saw most of the women were upset and all of the men were grim. Playing for our opposition was a physio who checked me out on the spot. He accurately and confoundingly predicted I would be told my ACL was nothing more than flotsam in my rapidly swelling knee. There are several telling tests to know if ones ACL is still intact; the Lachman; dynamic extension, and; anterior drawer tests. These tests are often performed on both legs to ascertain the difference if there is any, between the two knees. All tests should end in a ‘hard end’, where the femur and tibia and fibula lock against the anterior cruciate ligament in the knee. A ‘soft’ end is indicative of a rupture, and my leg was jelly.

The other telling signs are pain and a hemarthrosis, where your knee tries to emulate a balloon.

Part Two will go up in the next couple of days, but one of the most annoying things about breaking your ACL is the lack of an immediate, definitive diagnosis and consequently a lack of knowledge about what you can do to maximise your recovery. In the weeks waiting for an MRI I fantasised that the other team’s physio had gotten it wrong – he had only checked my bad knee without comparing it to my good knee – that I wouldn’t need to have surgery, that I hadn’t irreparably changed the rest of my life.

Unfortunately, my false hopes were wrong.