A short lived soccer career

by Julie
(California)

Hi, I am a 44 year old woman and have had a desk job for a few years now and am not in as good shape as I have been in the past. Some of my coworkers and I started playing indoor soccer,for about 4 months. I was just starting to have fun, make goals, and improve when on March 3, during a game, I landed on another woman's foot who was running, and next thing I knew I was on the ground in agony. I went to urgent care the next day and they referred me to an ortho doc who ordered an MRI and I had a completely torn ACL, a high grade injury to my MCL, a meniscus tear, and bone bruising.

I did about a month of pre-surgery PT to get the leg strong and moving again, all the while I knew that things were not right in my knee. I wore a brace the whole time, did my PT religiously, and made some progress, but it still really hurt to bend it. It especially hurt in the back of the knee. things were not improving that rapidly, and on May 12, I went in for surgery.

I was in surgery for almost 4 hours. They repaired my ACL with a cadaver graft, and stitched up my meniscus, and the surgeon found that I also had a grade 4 chondromalacia medial femoral condyle. He was not expecting this, and therefore I was in surgery for much longer than expected.

It's now been 9 days since my surgery. Since the surgery I have felt pretty dizzy, weak, and short of breath. They really beat me up in the OR too, my arms and leg have a lot of bruises (they had trouble finding a good vein for my IV).

I really don't like to take medicines so after about 4 days I tried to stop the pain meds and just take ibuprofin. well... that didn't work for me and I am now back on the pain meds every 6 hours. I am just in a lot of pain, and the rehab is going quite slow. I have been just pretty much taking it easy, not doing too much,elevating and icing it. I started PT on day 5 after surgery, and they say that I am making fine progess. I have some good days and bad days, more bad than good, but today I feel better, and am hoping that I am over the hardest part. I finally slept last night and I think that helped a lot.

I am able to straighten it, but am having trouble getting to 90 degree bend. I am still feeling a lot of pain in the back part of the knee. Have other people experienced pain predominantly in the back? I am trying to be patient, but have heard how important it is to get it bending so I am not sure how much to push it. I am not sure about the chondromalacia and how that affects things, I have never even heard of that before.

So the rehab is slow going, but I will continue to be persistent and take care of this knee. I am sad to say that I am going to stop playing soccer. I was just starting to have so much fun too.