Day 0, 1 and 2 ACL and Bucket Handle Tear Recovery

Intro to the blog-o-sphere.... (I am on Oxy as I write this so bear with me like the Second Amendment and Bear arms!)

I tore my ACL and bucket handle tear in my meniscus at a Brazilian Jiu Jitsu tournament on March 10. It was the first match and the guy I was up against had me a little off balance and one thing led to another and I felt my knee pop and go out the opposite way. This continued to happen about 3 more times in the first match and I ended up losing by points. I decided to continue on with the next match and took it right to the ground winning by submission. The win in the second match might have made me a little confident and I forgot about my knee throbbing because match 3 I went to do a shoot for the guys legs and my knee gave out and I fell flat to the ground the second I shot. This led to him taking my back and controlling me on the ground for much of the match. Every time I tried to push off of the mat to shrimp out or regain my guard I would feel the knee go out so I basically tried to fix my positioning with one leg. Since I had won 1 out of the 3 matches I was given a 4th match to see if I could make it to the 3rd place round. I did a little game planning with my coach and ended up taking him to the ground for a sub really fast and did the same in the bronze match with a sub... All in all, it wasn't a bad result for 3rd place with a (not yet known) torn ACL and bucket handle tear in my meniscus. I tried to do rehab at home for my knee for about a month until I felt it pop again and again. So eventually I was tired of the continuous swelling and lack of range with the knee and asked my PT to check it the ACL (Lachmans test) since the swelling was down a bit. After checking it for a few seconds he said he felt some motion and suggested me to a sports medicine doctor. The sports medicine doctor confirmed that my knee was fucked and would likely need surgery. So I got surgery scheduled for May 1, 2019 and dove into a 4 week PRE-hab of the knee! My typical daily exercises included 30 minutes of stationary bike, leg lifts, flutter kicks, stretches of the muscles and knee extensions (very hard to do with a bucket handle tear because the knee wont go straight) and then whatever upper body workout I wanted to complete on that day.


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Day 1 of recovery

I had a successful surgery!!! Actually the doctor was concerned with my MRI that I might have had a possible tear of the PCL and also that the meniscus was a little too shredded too repair but wouldn't know until he was in the knee. Well upon further inspection of the inside of my knee and the meniscus was good to go for repair and the PCL was in tack and just an ACL reconstruction (from donor Achilles) and cleaning/repair of my meniscus. 

No pain at all though as I have a blocker in my leg that is stopping the pain from actually happening. The nerve blocker is rather weird because I cannot move my leg, toes, or feet no matter how hard I tell my right leg to move.... lol.. I am signing off and hopefully will put this up as a blog tomorrow or tonight or some time but for now I will attempt to sleep.

ROM - 0 (Nerve block)

Pain - 0 (Nerve block)

Gains - Nothing yet... I moved my foot a little bit and it looked like it was twitching lol... no control till the nerve blocker wears off.

Set backs - N/A

Win of the day - The whole surgery!

Inspiration? - 'good' -Jocko Willink

Current video game - NHL 19

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Day 2

First day at PT! The overall session was a success and I cannot stress enough how happy I am that I did exercises for PREHAB before the surgery. My quad is feeling strong and I can almost make a muscle! The knee is still fucked though so it hurts pretty bad when I try to make a muscle but overall it is tolerable. I was able to hold my leg up for 10 seconds while holding a quad muscle squeeze. Stretching feels great on the legs as they have been through a bunch but overall happy with current progress and pain. Sent home with homework (exercises) to do every 30 minutes. Foot bends (not sure what they are actually called but moving the foot back and forth to stop swelling) and knee extensions while tightening the quad. I have been doing 50 of these every half hour switching which exercise I do next.

ROM - +8 

Pain - 4

Strength - Able to lift my leg up for leg raises

Set backs - N/A

Win of the day - PT!!!

Inspiration? Potential burpess in August!!!

Current video game - Resident Evil 2 (Remake)