12th week post op! tick tick tick

Finally broke the 100 day mark until sports! wheeee! It's hard to believe I only have 99 days left! In one week I'll be half done!

Over the past week I've started to jog, run up stairs, and skip rope. Other than that, not much new. I get the odd crack, snap, needle pain in and around my knee every now and then, but it's not too bad.

12 down, 14 more to go!

Jogging 101

On Saturday I attemped jogging for the first time since the injury (9? 10? months ago). It also coincides with the first time I have ever used a treadmill. Due to this last fact I had trouble *walking* on the treadmill at first. I'm more used to my body moving when I take a step forward, not some pad underneath me.

Anyway... after 10 minutes of walking and speed walking and building up confidence to run, eventually, with 2 hands on the bar in front of me, I started to jog. I put a lot of weight on the bar just to feel safe but I knew I had to eventually remove myself from the "training wheels" and go it at it freestyle. At first I was using my right leg a lot more than my left but eventually (through lots of self confidence building) I managed to equal them out and jog normally!! No pain or swelling afterwards so I can continue to jog indefnitely! Well, maybe not indefinitely. Right now jogging for me consists of 1 minute of jogging and 1 minute of speed walking, 10 minutes total.

I've also been running up stairs which feels great! Although my physio didn't say it was ok, I'll just assume it is!

11th Week Post Op

- "Can I jog yet? "

- "Yes."

Ahhhh, those are some sweet words. Although there is no treadmill at my physios', I will try jogging tomorrow at the gym. I'm restricted to soft surfaces for now and if it swells up afterwards I'll have to wait another week before trying again.

I've got some more intense hopping routines and the superman exercise: stand on one leg, and make body + other leg parallel to the ground. Superman is intense.

One thing that has cropped up in the past few weeks is the fat pad under my knee cap, also known as the infrapatellar fat pad. When I hyper extend and let my leg sit there for a bit, and then bend my knee quickly, I can feel that fat pad in the way, almost as if it is blocking my knee from bending. It is not painful at all. If I do it slowly it feels normal. Both the physio and chiro didn't have any good solutions but don't think it's too much of a concern. Building up leg muscles will hopefully solve the problem and I'll also be icing it in case it's inflammation.

10th Week Post Op!

I'm finally in the magical weeks (10-12) where the graft is stuck to the bone and won't come out and that means 2 weeks away till I start running again.

- Skipping rope has improved, but I need to take 2 hops before the rope goes all the way around. My knee starts to shake quite violently when it gets tired, so I can't do it for long.
- I'm up to 40 pounds on hamstring curls 3 sets of 10. I rarely feel that strain when I do them and if I do, it's minor.
- I've still got some inflammation of the bursa sacks (or whatever blob like pad is under the knee cap) which leads me to...
- I've decided I need more break days to let my leg rest and heal. Sometimes a week of daily exercises goes by and I wake up one morning with a sore leg / knee.

The next 2 weeks will be fairly boring. I'm counting down the days till I can run!

And on a side note, not relating to my leg, I've finally started to get the handle on throwing a long flick! woohoo!

9th Week Post Op

Another one bites the dust!

I have 3 more weeks until I can start running so I won't be seeing my physio until then. I finally overcame my mental barrier stopping me from the one legged hop! Physically, it was very easy, so my physio gave me a new exercise: Skipping Rope. Having never used this strange contraption, I was a little bit stumped on getting it all the way around. But after many trial and error episodes, I managed to skip rope! Every now and then the rope hits my head, but as my physio says "you'll improve your leg and improve on skipping rope!"

I also mentioned that the doc said my leg needs more hyper extension, but my physio thinks it looks fine and it's probably tight hamstrings. So my focus will also be on my flexibility over the next few weeks.

My leg has been aching more in the morning when I wake up, but I assume this is due to the more strenuous exercises I put it through. I've also had dreams about running, so maybe I'm sleep running!

17 More weeks to go!

2 Months in Review

Today I met with the surgeeeeoo.... doctor to go over my knee. Everytime I visit the fracture clinic I see a different doctor. My surgeon didn't show up as it was a pretty basic examination. This doctor tested the acl and checked out the knee. Diagnosis: grrreeeaaat! I do, however, need to work on hyperextension to match my other leg. He mentioned that I can expect to return to competitive sports at the 6 month post op mark which lifted my spirits up!

Accomplishments since the last month:

• Almost full flexion, minus a couple of degrees
• Walking is normal
• small hops on the one leg
• bumped up the weights on hamstring curls to 30 lbs for 3 sets of 10
• the inner quad is working properly and is looking better every day.

Goals for the next month:

• match my good leg for extension and flexion.
• start light jogging
• hop on the one leg with more confidence
• build up more quad / hamstring / core strength
• protect the graft

2 months down, 4 more to go! woohoo!