Sunil's ACL recon plus meniscectomy and DVT!

by Sunil
(Brisbane, Australia)

Hi,

I am Sunil. I am an Intensive Care specialist and work in one of the ICUs in Brisbane, Australia.

I had a nasty twisting injury that I remember 15-16 yrs ago while I was playing cricket and was quickly turning to take another run. That's when I had that terrible give wasy kind of sensation and severe pain followed by swelling. I actually didnot do anything actively for it for a number of years which I think caused some further worsening including medial and lat meniscal tears.

meantime apart from occasionally having this give way sensation when suddenly turning to walk or run, I did not suffer from great discomfort or pain, but could see that I wasn't having normal range of motion with my right leg compared to normal left.

Recently while playing tennis I twisted my knee again and this led me to the surgery. i decided to get the surgery done because I am still 35 and could possiblly get involved with tennis and cricket on social level for fitness purposes for another 10-15 yrs at least.

I had my surgery 4 weeks ago (Mid June 09). First day postop I had terrible urine retention which was fortunately relieved with some simple warm water bath. I was discharged the next day with analgesics and physio instructions.

first 3-4 days were quite painful requiring plenty of analgesia. I was able to go to toilet with crutches but could hardly do anything more than that. that probably resulted in me having a DVT in my calf. I realized this when at the end of 4 days I started having calf pain, venous engorgement in foot with change of colour and classical Hoffman's sign, pain on stretching legs. that was bit of a setback. I had to commence blood thinning medications or that. I want to emphacise to anybody reading this to consider and ask the orthopod for prophylactic blood thinning medications or at lest compression stockings or calf compressor devices for few days post surgery, no matter how low risk you are for developing DVT!

Another thing i realized how quickly the strength in the muscles vanishes. My right thigh is half the size of left and the muscles are like bag of Gel, although strength starts returning once Physiotherapy is started which I think one of the best things available to get one back on own feet. God knows if they were not there, what would happen, The orthopods are happy to wave you goodbye once they think there are no surgical problems left.

Now 4 weeks down the line I am able to largely walk without crutches, but am still limping and will need lot of work to improve muscle strength in Quads and HAmstrings plus balancing and proprioception (joint position sense). I continue to have some swelling around the knee and lot of stiffness if I dont wear a support brace. Hopefully things improve in another 3-4 wks time.