ACL War Stories
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No obvious complications, they also sewed up 2 minor meniscus tears. Pain not excessive, yet, probably on medication. Physical therapy started the next day, and there was also some of that before surgery to preserve range of motion. She forgot to bring her brace last Saturday when Adam took her to Squaw. He said she still skied fine but had more swelling than usual at the end of the day. Thus no skiing Sunday.
She had the graft of one of her own patella tendons of the same knee. This makes for a slightly longer rehab of 9 months or so, but also has the best chance of the new ACL being eventually as strong as the original.
She had the graft of one of her own patella tendons of the same knee. This makes for a slightly longer rehab of 9 months or so, but also has the best chance of the new ACL being eventually as strong as the original.
Molly will be back at UCSD next week. It's a sprawling campus but supposedly they will provide her with an on-call golf cart chauffeur for spring quarter.
Given her long history in sports, I suspect she'll stick to the letter of the rehab program.
I forget, isn't one of your SLC crew facing the same situation?
Given her long history in sports, I suspect she'll stick to the letter of the rehab program.
I forget, isn't one of your SLC crew facing the same situation?
rfarren
New member
My cousin tore his ACL 2 years ago at Jay. He had the same surgery done, where they took one of his own patella tendons. He is very athletic, and is very active now. Within seven months he was able to play basketball again. Even so, 2 years later he is a bit numb on the top of his knee cap, and still complains of minor pain where they took the tendon. However, he doubts he would have been able to continue his athletic lifestyle had he taken the tendon from a cadaver.
Mike Siegel in our Snowbird group had the cadaver operation ~12 years ago. He was one of the slower members of our group for a few years after that but was skiing quite well the past several seasons. Then he ripped out the cadaver ACL in Chile last August and is probably having another surgery this summer.
As I may have mentioned before, I blew out an ACL on my second day on skis in 1976. That knee is fortunately stabilized by the patella tendons, so I didn't find out the nature of the 1976 injury until an MRI 19 years later.
Make that 32 years (and 16+ million vertical feet) and counting. The patella tendons are evidently much tighter than normal, and thus do the job of stabilizing the knee without an ACL. The doctor who did the MRI in 1995 said, "From the pictures this knee should not be functioning. Since it is, don't let me or any other doctor mess with it."
He said about 10% of people that lose an ACL have the tight patella tendons and don't need the surgery. I have never noticed any difference in ski mechanics between the two knees. No swelling, no difference in fatigue from skiing bumps, etc. The torn meniscus from 1995 is sensitive to hard landings, so I stay out of the terrain parks, but that's about it. The knee has also survived some off-season adventures like Mt. Whitney and the Inca Trail without incident.
We watched Molly ski quite a bit with the brace and no ACL this season. Her ski technique is so strong that an outside observer couldn't really see anything unusual. But she had swelling every day and thus skied a lot of partial days to keep it under control. She also said that powder/unconsolidated snow made it sore, particularly on her slalom skis. So I rented demos for her before we subjected her to the admin tour of Alta. On the Iron Blosam trip she went back to Alta before I arrived and got demos for the whole stay there.
And what is the status of Dale's ACL?
Tony Crocker":1v3uqwic said:
He's back skiing with a substantial brace and without an ACL. Due to his age and prior unrelated problems in that knee he's a candidate for a full knee replacement not too far down the road, so he doc told him that they couldn't justify repairing it.
Note that we renamed the scene of the mishap in his honor yesterday.
Is a full knee replacement stable without an ACL? My impression is that knee replacements are for those who have lost so much cartilage that they have painful bone-on-bone contact. Seems unrelated to ligament damage, but I'm not a doctor.