Peter's ACL adventures

(Buffalo, NY)

I tore my ACL while playing hockey in January of 2010. I saw a doctor and he thought an ACL reconstruction using a hamstring graft was the best choice. So in March 2010 I had the surgery and went through physical therapy and began playing soccer in August. During the second game of the season, I tore it again. I saw the same doctor who said the graft "dissolved away, you didn't tear it." But i knew this wasn't true, the doctor wanted to redo the surgery as soon as possible with the same graft but from the other leg. After hearing him, we decided to go get a 2nd, and eventually a 3rd, opinion. I ended getting the surgery redone by a different doctor who used my patellar graft. After I woke up from the surgery, he told me why the last surgery did not work. It was because the first doctor misplaced the graft in a way that when I bent my knee, I was stretching the graft, rendering it pointless. He said the tunnel in the femur was "too high and forward." Now, I am 3 months post-op, and rehab was much easier and less painful with a correctly positioned graft!