Mike's ACL Surgery - rugby injury in my youth, regular skiier today

by Mike
(Canterbury, UK)

I used to play rugby when I was younger, for both school and my local city teams. I had two separate knee problems, both with my left knee over two years. The first was a cartildge tear, fixed with keyhole surgery but the second was more major a torn ACL.

I had just turned 17 at the time and was beginning to play for my school 1st fifteen. The actual incident was rather innocuous - I was running to make a tackle and pivotted. As I did I felt the ligament snap and collapsed. I wasn't in contact just running and turning.

I arranged to have the knee reconstruction 18 months later, just after leaving school, so that the recovery time wouldn't interfere with school work and exams. Those 18 months were really hard, I was on and off crutches for most of it and it was pretty much always swollen. My school had a large campus and it was hard to find times to rest and let it recover.

Fortunately the op itself was very successful. I was looked after well in the local private hospital and the surgeon did a great job. I was in for 4 days afterwards, mostly because the knee had a drain tube in place for two days after the op. Most of that time I was either asleep (from the lovely morphine) or being pestered by physios to move around.

Looking back now, 10 years later, I can say the operation was highly successful. I haven't played rugby again, mostly because it lost a lot of appeal after the injury. The repair has given me no trouble in years, in fact it stands up to a lot of abuse when I ski (which I try do do for a week every year) and go hiking.

More recently I've met an EXCELLENT sports physio who has straightened me out. I've seen her regularly for the past 6 months and she has transformed my body. While the ACL was fixed, I had been suffering from recurrent tendonitis below both knee caps. She identifed problems with my body alignment/posture, which I must have carried for my whole life. The past 6 months have been pretty near pain free, which is a record for me, and my legs are stronger than they have every been before.

We suspect that the alignment problems were a strong contributing factor to the original knee problems in the first place, and I'm so glad to have got to the underlying cause and be working to improve it.