The Dreaded ACL: my nightmare

The idea behind this blog came to me just a few days back. Late last week I felt a sharp pain on the outside of my left knee any time that I put pressure on my leg. Walking hurt, standing hurt, laying on my side in bed hurt. The pain grew over the weekend, as did some swelling, despite bags of ice. I tried to think over the past week, of somewhere I might have banged the knee on something, hoping it was just bruised. I had played volleyball on Tuesday and Wednesday, and landed awkwardly one night, my arm getting bruised the next evening. It must have been Tuesday.

Ever since my high school days, I have feared knee injuries. I have a condition where the two large legs bones scrape the inside of my kneecap, so when I crouch down and come up, you hear cracking the whole way. My mom's knees would do this walking up stairs. The simple thought of this, creeps me to no end, and even right now typing this, I'm getting a little queasy. Then I saw a knee injury, the one where the patella tendon snaps, and the knee cap go sliding into the thigh... okay, I'm done with the descriptions. You might be shivering yourself now. Anyway, I fear the knee injury, and the most common is the ACL.

My senior year of high school I was told I had patella tendinitis, which made the tendon over the top of my knee sore. That makes it difficult to jump, but with some time and ice, things got better. Then in college, I strained my ACL and LCL, two of the four tendons that hold the knee together. For six weeks I was forced to wear a leg immobilizer, could not run, jump or walk on my left leg, for fear that any of the tendons would snap (which results in 10 to 12 months of rehab). This proved to be one of the reasons I ended my college career just a few short months later. I was prescribed 4 ibuprofen a day for the pain, for six weeks. It was a sharp localized pain on the inside of the knee from the cap to the back, every time I put pressure on the knee, and the more pressure applied, the more pain. The amount of force to propel a 150-pound object about six-and-a-half feet in the air, is enormous, and your knee takes all of that force.

That pain came back last week. Over the past few years I had general soreness in the knees, just as everyone does, but this was a pain I had not felt in about 15 years. Other pains and injuries I would shrug off... but knee pain, especially sharp pain, makes me stop.

After five days of ice and no activity, the sharp pain has subsided. I noticed a large bruise on my other knee, which has garnered my attention at this moment. So with that, I'm willing to test the knee tonight at volleyball. This week begins the long stretch of summer athletics, better to test it now and see how it responds.

- Tom.