Wendy's ACL/Med. meniscus + STAPH infection

by Wendy
(Lincoln, CA)

Hi, my name is Wendy and I’m 34 years old. I tore my right ACL & damaged my medial meniscus on April 23 while exercising at an indoor trampoline place called SkyZone in Rocklin, CA (something I do not suggest doing for anyone, no mater how many calories it burns). I felt the “pop” and hoped that it was nothing, but in my heart I knew what I had done….I had the same thing happen 17 years earlier to my left knee while skiing.

On June 12, I had the surgery and used my hamstring for the graft, surgery went fine and I went home to recover. A week later at the post-op appt. things also seemed to be going well, and I was cleared to start physical therapy again, (I did 3 weeks of it prior to the surgery). Therapy was going well, but I would get extremely swollen and lots of pain afterwards- which I expected to be normal. By the 3rd week my pain & swelling would not go away- even with the drugs so I went back to my doctor. He drained me and advised me that I would be going in for emergency surgery because there was clearly an infection of some sort. So on July 2, (3 weeks after the first surgery) I had the “emergency surgery”, they cleaned me out and I remained in the hospital for 5 days. Final diagnosis was a staph infection. I was sent home with a pick line and 14 days of high dose antibiotics.

So my recovery has not been text book. I have two young children and work full-time, so it’s been hard on everyone, but my husband has been wonderful threw everything. I’m still not able to walk with out crutches; it’s been 3 weeks since the 2nd surgery. PT is going well and I’m starting to be more active (e.g.: not just sitting in bed all day, making it out to the TV room), but still icing & elevating when it flares up. My main fear is that I still have or will get the staph infection back, since I did not have the “normal” symptoms for infection the first time. Hope this helps someone….staph infections can happen, unlikely, but can happen.