This afternoon I had my follow-up to my MRI with the orthopedic Dr. And to the shock of no one, I've been moving on a busted wheel for 2.5 months now. More specifically, the ACL is most definitely torn and there's also a tear in the meniscus. I've never seen an MRI in real life before, but it's pretty obvious something is wrong from what I saw.
So what happens next? Well surgery is pretty much the consensus. The way the tear is, it can't be repaired, the best situation is replacing it. This is where the title of this blog fits, because the Dr said I'm looking at about 4-5 months before I can start doing "activities" again... and 9-10 months before I'd be considered healed.
For a knee ligament replacement, you're giving a couple of options on how it's replaced. They can either graft the ligament from your hamstring, your patella or you can get a ligament from a donor. And before you ask, the donor is human... I'm not going to turn into a sequel to a Rob Schnieder movie. Each choice has it's pros and cons and I really don't know which way I'd go right now. I'm going to look into it a bit more and probably dedicate a whole post to it.
So what happens now? Well, the surgery is the obvious answer, but it does get a bit more complicated then that... at least on a personal level. Without being ominous about it I'll just say preparing for this is more then just picking the date. In the meantime, the Dr did say that I can use a stationary bike and an elliptical... so I can get back to cardio! He also suggests getting my quad and hamstrings into shape between now and whenever the surgery is. That actually makes me stoked, even though it won't be done via squats... which for some dumb reason I miss doing.
Follow me on twitter @bbowes81 or comment here or e-mail me... I don't know if there's an e-mail button somewhere on my blog, but if not it's bigbadbowes@gmail.com
No comments:
Post a Comment