Pre surgery

Well, I am now around 3 days away from surgery.I did LOT of reading and these are my key takeaways regarding this stage-

• First and foremost find the best surgeon you can possibly get.Preferably a guy who has done a few thousand of these..you get the idea.

• Quads and other supporting muscles shut down, and all the more after the surgery,so the stronger you go into surgery the easier you recover.

• Get back your full range of motion(ROM) before the surgery.Or else the recovery will be that much longer.
• Maintain a positive frame of mind throughout,be focused on the end result(for me that would be getting back to playing football withing 6-10 months).

So anyways, as I could feel my left quad starting to sort of atrophy, I got started on my exercises to get full ROM and salvage whats left of the quads,hamstrings,calf muscles.Some daily quad presses, half squats and heel raises did the trick for me, along with a conscious effort to walk without a limp with a normal gait.Looking forward to the surgery.

Intro - what it is,how it happened

What is it?

Anterior Cruciate Ligament.The three dreaded words every athlete hopes he/she is never associated with.According to my non-medical know-how, it is the ligament that provides most stability to a knee joint.Think a kind of rubber band that snaps under sudden stress.It is a very common injury among athletes involved in pivoting sports like football and basketball. What makes this injury a lot more complicated than the average bone break is that this ligament,unlike a bone ,does not regenerate on giving it time to heal, hence requiring some sort of a reconstruction.

michael owen-ACL tear at the world cup

How it happened to me:

I am actively involved in sports,mostly football(FOR THE LAST TIME IT IS NOT CALLED SOCCER!!) ever since school,and then into my university.Right now I have a 9-5 job, but still find time for some good 5-a-side around 4 days a week and the occasional tennis during the weekend.It was all going well until a couple of weeks back(7th OCT to be precise).I was chasing the ball,suddenly decelerated and changed direction.My body moved forward,but unfortunately my left knee did not follow suit.I felt what I though was my knee cap dislocating and then back to position, accompanied by an almost electric shock sort of a feeling    of tearing something.Before I knew it, I was down on the ground clutching my knee and had to be helped back home.

Any weight I put on the leg would lead to excruciating pain and was neither able to extend nor flex my leg.The next morning, I had an MRI and the doctor confirmed my worst fear-a torn ACL requiring reconstruction.What was even more painful was knowing that this meant atleast 6-10 months out of football.

After doing some research on the available variations of the reconstruction procedure, I decided to go with the patellar tendon autograph.I got in touch with one of the best surgeons in the city and have booked my operation date for the 2nd of November.Fingers crossed.