OT: Reconstructive "Sports" Surgery Experiences
Injury, cause, timetable if you want a format.
Beat Arizona.
December 14th, 2013 at 3:38 AM ^
December 14th, 2013 at 5:08 AM ^
December 14th, 2013 at 7:43 AM ^
I've needed two more surgeries on the same knee for meniscus tears since then so my basketball days are over.
December 14th, 2013 at 8:03 AM ^
I had surgery a month later once swelling went down and the knee had better range of motion.
Rehab began the very next day. I think I was in a wheelchair for maybe 3 days, crutches for maybe a month, and then I was walking (albeit with a limp initially) until I was cleared for all activities about 3-4 months after surgery.
I was able to play my senior year.
December 14th, 2013 at 8:27 AM ^
December 14th, 2013 at 8:37 AM ^
December 14th, 2013 at 9:09 AM ^
December 14th, 2013 at 9:20 AM ^
December 14th, 2013 at 10:04 AM ^
@Geaux_Blue I'll try to keep this short but here are my experience's with bloodclots.
December 14th, 2013 at 1:44 PM ^
are you on thinners now, or is there some systemic thing that has since changed that would obviate the need for that?
December 14th, 2013 at 8:06 PM ^
Thinners for the time being. Hoping to get off after another year but it is tough to go off and trust my body right now. We will see.
December 14th, 2013 at 10:01 AM ^
I tore my ACL, MCL and LCL in one motion playing basketball. It was odd because I knew something serious happened but the pain wasn't as bad as I would have thought. For some reason I started "crawling" to the sideline using my arms and one good leg with the bad one dragging behind me. The ACL was completely servered and they had reattach it using a graft from a tendon in the same leg. The graft removal scar ending up being the biggest scar of all the incesions. I had 3 weeks before I could put any weight on it and a month of rehab. I year later I tore my MCL in my other knee. That process was a lot easier and I could limp around on the leg right after surgery. I'm 32 and I can still feel pain in both knees on cold days.
December 14th, 2013 at 10:12 AM ^
Both basketball. First time I came down with a rebound on a guy's foot in a pile during an AAU game, knee buckled inward and tore ACL/MCL/Lateral meniscus (buckethandle tear), second time I pivoted wrong going down the floor avoiding a guy coming at me, tore ACL & meniscus so they ended up removing the meniscus. Both happened within 3 or so years of each other, between summer going into my senior year of HS and Jr. year of college. Always good feeling like an old man at 27 whenever it's below freezing, but I can still run and stay active enough, even if I don't hoop anymore.
December 14th, 2013 at 10:26 AM ^
December 14th, 2013 at 10:50 AM ^
December 14th, 2013 at 12:11 PM ^
I was fortunate enough that the ACL scarred onto the PCL, so I didn't need it replaced. I had a hole the size of a quarter in my cartilage and 90% of my meniscus removed. I got a shot in my knee a few months ago to help lubricate the inside and help with mobility. It feels more fluid a few weeks after the shot. I'm 44 and have to wait about 10 more years to get the entire knee replaced. My Dr. said I had the knee of a 70 year. So I have that going for me.
December 14th, 2013 at 3:05 PM ^
Based on my limited experience working with college athletes as a strength coach the most common injuries are those that involve high movement velocities and/or collisions. In overhead sports you see a lot of elbow/UCL and shoulder/rotator cuff injuries to the soft tissues around the joint and even dislocations. Also in you see a lot of hamstring strain, lateral ankle sprain, all sorts of knee injuries especially in football and any other sport that plays on artificial turf. Then, you get all sorts of fractures on the hands, wrist, forearms, and lower leg bones. And, of course you have concussions. Only a handful of these injuries require surgery.
The only surgery I have personally had is to repair the distal phalange of the last finger (smallest bone on the end of the pinkie) that I fractured fielding a ground ball in baseball and needed surgery to repair a tibia and fibula fracture. The pinkie was a pretty quick job and healed enough to play within 3 weeks. All they had to do was reset it and repair the finger nail bed the nail penetrated the skin where the fracture forced it out....no big deal. The tibia and fibula fracture was much worse and required hardware to repair, then two other surgeries to remove the hardware. I was in a hard cast for about 3 months after the first surgery, then a boot for another 6 weeks or so. Then, I played a season of baseball with most of the hardware in and finally had another surgery to remove the rest and was in a boot again for about a month. My guess is it was probably pretty similar to what Fitz did.
December 14th, 2013 at 4:43 PM ^
December 14th, 2013 at 8:06 PM ^
December 14th, 2013 at 5:47 PM ^
Tore my shoulder to shreds when a wave in the Gulf of Mexico crested into it, popping it out backwards and leading to two additional dislocations and complete tears when I recreated the windmill motion bc I was too punch drunk to think clearly. Had an MRA done at UM (student at the time), which was beyond painful, and they never called me with the results so I assumed, as a dumb 19 yr old does, that nothing was wrong. Have dislocated/rolled it several times per year since for a decade and finally had enough when climbing head first onto a bed to play with my daughter caused it to roll. Had surgery Thursday and am having a hell of a time with the meds, nerve block and pain. Fortunate with the timing though that I won't miss too much work due to the holidays, though I'm prob going to have to shell out for plow service
December 14th, 2013 at 6:07 PM ^
I've torn both my ACL's. The last one was in 2009, I had it reconstruced in Indy using the opposite leg patella graft, the surgery was performed by Dr. Don Shelbourne who pioneered the opposite leg graft which cuts your recovery time in half. You walk the day of the surgery, you're never given crutches, and I was cleared to resume sports in exactly 3 months...And I'm an old guy to boot!
December 14th, 2013 at 6:44 PM ^
I had my knee dislocated playing sandlot football as a teenager. The elderly GP I went to said I had stretched ligaments and had me on crutches with a knee immobilizer for two weeks. I continued to have problems with my knee slipping out of joint for the next few years, and finally went to the UM ER after blowing it out again in my early twenties. When I told them how I had originally injured my knee, they didn't believe me, because only an idiot would assume a completely dislocated knee could be treated with a knee imobilizer. I had extensive damage, including no ACL or MCL and had state of the art surgery, which in the early eighties consisted of moving a muscle to help support the knee. After six weeks in a cast from hip to toe, I got to start physical therapy and was told I should never run or jump again. I tried a few times, but the doc was right.
December 14th, 2013 at 8:17 PM ^
#1: Football; tackler put his hemet to the knee. (right knee)
#2: 5 years later; Basketball busted it coming down from a dunk (right knee)
#3: 3 years after that; Basketball, tracked down a fast break blocked the shot, pop goes the left knee.
Probably should get a new hobby.
December 15th, 2013 at 8:29 AM ^
December 15th, 2013 at 8:30 AM ^