1 week!

1 week down, 25 more to go!

I've managed to reduce the shin pain by massaging it while I stand up. This seems to help quite a bit. I've also ditched the brace most of the time as I just rely on crutches. (The brace makes the shin feel much worse). Overall I'd say the shin pain has gone down a little bit. I don't have any intense / unbearable moments of pain anymore.

I took a 20 min walk around the block with Alice today. I used the crutches but tried to put full weight on the leg. There wasn't any pain, but my knee did swell up a little bit.

6th Day Post Op

Well the shin pain is now extremely strong when going from a sitting position to standing. Putting weight on the foot after standing doesn't really change the pain much. Having the brace on makes it a lot worse. From what I've read this is normal, however, I'm more hesitant to stand up now and have relegated to crawling around most of the time. I'm still sticking to the extra strength Tylenol instead of the pain killers. I finally realized I should be icing the part that hurts. Maybe it'll make a difference. Hopefully this pain will go away soon so I can venture outside more!

5th Day Post-Op

Today was physiotherapist day. He threw out my slacker routine of just quad crunches and gave me 4 extra ones: leg raises, calf extensions, hip raises, and knee bending. He found it odd that the instructions I received didn't mention bending my knee. Either way, bending will occur!

Sleep wasn't very good last night, 2am 3am, 5am, 7am wake ups. I felt pain in the back of my knee for the first time. It went away after some massaging.

4th Day Post Op

Slept from midnight till 5am this morning, which is the best sleep I've had in awhile. Took my first shower on my own today. It's a long process of taking all the wrappings / bandages off, showering, and putting them all back on.

As for the knee, It's about the same as yesterday, painful when I first stand up, but after time I can walk around without the pain. I can already feel myself loathing the brace and then I realize it's quite a few weeks till I can ditch it.

Tonight was extremely painful when standing up and walking around was slightly painful. I suppose all the walking I've been doing has been too much!

3rd day post op

I stopped taking the pain meds yesterday and just relied on some extra strength Tylenol. So far I feel a lot better waking up this morning and there's no more nausea. The knee still needs the ice packs and although it's painful to stand on it initially, it usually subsides and I can walk around (with crutches)

I'm also practicing walking without crutches and just the brace, I go about a snails pace, but I'm hoping to hit 1meter / hour by tomorrow.

The doctor also confirmed I shouldn't be bending my leg until 7-10 days after surgery so that the sutures won't break.

2nd day post-op

Slept a little better last night, I've slowly weaned myself off the painkillers, I'm currently 6 hours and no pills... Hopefully I'll be able to eat better as my appetite has slowly gone downhill. I've also taken off the large bandage covering my knee and checked out the incisions. Quite gross!

1st Day Post Op

I hardly slept at all last night as the nerve block and anesthetic slowly wore off. However the cryocuff + pain killers helped. My leg has feeling again and standing up no longer makes me sick. The pain killers make me very drowsy. I'm able to eat more foods now which is good as my stomach has been whining non-stop.

I have my post op exercises / instructions to do. However, it doesn't mention anything about bending my knee, which I find a little odd. Most of the blogs / post-op rehab I've read consists of bending your knee asap.

My brand new ACL!

I was up at 5:45am to get to the hospital at 7. Surgery was at 9. I met 5 different people before surgery: the surgeon, the doc, the nurse, the anesthesiologist and his assistant. I had a nerve block and lots of drugs. At one point I kept looking at the air duct, and I thought it was moving and couldn't stop staring at it. After that I woke up in the recovery room. I had quite a bit of pain under my leg so apparently they might have missed the back side of my leg for the nerve block. They gave me some morphine and I was good. I was still pretty drowsy after waking up and had some issues standing up as I would start sweating heavily and felt very nauseous. Once I lied down again I was fine. Because of this I didn't leave the hospital until 3:30.

Because of the nerve block I couldn't feel the front half of my leg, which was kinda weird. My mom, being a physiotherapist, was able to hook me up with a cryo cuff! which has made icing a lot easier (although I didn't feel the cold at this time)

My girl Alice has been great at taking care of me and hooking me up with food! Although it's tough to eat at times.

All systems go!

I've received a call from the hospital with instructions on what to do / not do before tomorrow. Looks like everything is an "ok to launch!". No midnight snacking and no morning tequila shots!

My leg is feeling pretty good. It's hard to believe it's been 7 months since the injury. I've lost some enthusiasm over the past month or so, but now that the day has come I can feel it creeping back.

Breaking News!

I just received a call from the surgeon. Apparently new research has shown that the ACL is a myth and doesn't exist hence why it didn't show up on my MRI. Woohoo! But apparently they still need to remove part of my hamstring because "We planned to take it out, so let's take it out" so I'll still require surgery and the 6 months of rehab. Doh!

Here's the article debunking the acl myth: ACL Enlightenment provides relief to millions of injured athletes who tore nothing