Woo Hoo

Great news…. I don’t need surgery! I spent the morning at the doctors and learned a ton about my knee. First off, when I got there they sent me over to get a few radiographs done. I had had an MRI done already, but the doc wanted some views of what my knee was doing in a standing/weight barring position. Then I headed back over to the doctor’s office.  He then informed me that back in 98 I not only had I had ACL reconstruction on my left knee but also PCL!!!!! I didn’t know that. Apparently tearing both your ACL and PCL is fairly rare and takes TOTAL dislocation of the knee and about 40-70 degrees of rotation. No wonder it hurt so badly. He then went on to ask a ton of questions about how often there is pain, swelling, immobility of my knee(s)…  all of which was vertically never (besides this injury now, and occasional stiffness when the weather changes).  He manipulated my knees and we chatted about my hyper-flexibility. He even did a few tests/checks to rule out Ehlers-Danlos syndromes (since having hyper-flexible joints is the number one sign). No worries I’m ‘normal’ just very ‘bendy’. He watched me walk and then we went through my MRI and radiographs. They look GREAT! The surgical repairs are perfect, the meniscus is clean and I have only one little arthritic change. Which according to him, is unheard of. Apparently when people tear their ACL and PCL, without fail, by the 10 year mark there is significant (and painful) arthritic changes at the ventral attachment of the PCL… I have NONE! The fact that I haven’t had swelling or pain on a daily basis since my surgery is unheard of, and the fact that I don’t have degeneration of the meniscus and am not riddled with arthritic changes is mind blowing to him… and according to all the ‘texts books’ I should not be able to run like I do. It’s as if my body never had an injury… let alone a MASIVE, potentially physically limiting injury! All wonderful news. The injury that I am currently dealing with has nothing to do with past issues! It just is a patellar (knee cap) injury that will improve with rest!!!!!!! I asked him if I should stop running and he said, “you never should have been running, but since you have been for the past 15 years and your body doesn’t mind it, take some time to let your knee heal and then go ahead and get back into it…’!!!!!!! WooHooo! He did recommend some inserts that should go into all my shoes and potentially some quadriceps muscle exercises… but that’s it! Cool Huh?!?!?

Oh and apparently the bendy-joint gene is hereditary and bendy people who play sports almost always tear their ACL, so we’ll have to watch and see what the kidd-o’s are like…. We might have to get them to strengthen their quads before playing physical sports. (Pretty sure Mallory can already squat as much as I can…. This might be frightening)