OT: Reconstructive "Sports" Surgery Experiences

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.  

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.

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.