An Odd Sense of Relief
by Andrew Heffernan on Dec 15, 2010 7:05 PM EST
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PrintLast Monday--as on nearly every Monday for the last year or so--I attended an aikido class, at the end of which we did an exercise called randori, in which multiple attackers approach and attempt to throw a single student, one at a time. When you're in the center of it, it's an egg-beater of an exercise, with limbs and bodies and hands and elbows flailing at every turn.Thirty seconds, the typical duration of the exercise, feels like an eternity.
When it was my turn, I fared pretty well at the beginning, chucking my fellow students hither and yon for a good 20 seconds or so. Then, after one particularly hard throw, I stepped onto my left foot, started to pivot, and...felt a hard pop in my knee. I called "time" on the randori, naturally, and checked on my knee. There wasn't much pain, and the knee felt fairly stable, but I sat out the last few minutes of class. Needless to say, I was concerned. Feeling a pop like a champagne cork out of the bottle issuing from one's knee is, well, disconcerting.
Yesterday I iced, wrapped, and elevated the joint, taking some comfort in the fact that my knee felt stable, even if I couldn't fully straighten or bend it without pain. Almost on a whim, I got a referral to a sports medicine doctor from a friend who'd recently ruptured his Achilles tendon, and went to see him this morning.
Dr. Byron Patterson, seriously one of the coolest, friendliest doctors I've ever met, and who I'd now recommend to any Angelino in need of a sports-med guy, told me he couldn't tell what was going on in the knee until he drained away the swelling. If the fluid from the drain was clear, he told me, then most likely, the injury was minor. If there was blood in the fluid, then I'd need an MRI.
He then preceded to drain 55 cc's--a hefty turkey-baster's worth--of pinkish fluid out of my knee.
My MRI appointment is on Friday, and my follow-up with Patterson on Monday--at which point I'll know more.
I asked him if it might be my ACL. He said maybe. I asked if I'd need surgery. He said maybe.
This might be some odd steroid-in-my-knee-induced high I'm experiencing, but after a period of disbelief, I feel an odd sense of relief in this. Somehow, even if this is a worst-case scenario, a full rupture of my ACL, and I need a few months of rehab to fix my knee, and that I need to back off of things like aikido (which I do enjoy), and make some concession to the rapid approach of midlife, well...I'm strangely okay with it. I've worked out five or six days a week, for the last twenty-two years. I took one month off in 1987 during a trip abroad, another month off in 1988 while working at a summer camp, and less than a month off on my honeymoon in 1999. Aside from those three breaks, I haven't taken serious time off in more than two decades.
As I said, I don't know yet what this preliminary doctor's appointment means for the next year or so of my life as an exercise nut, but if I have to take it easy and go at things a little differently for awhile, if I need to be exercise some patience and caution with my body for the next bit of time, if this is a doctor-mandated reason to chill out and stop treating my body like a punching bag, well...so be it.
Anyone else ever feel this way?
I'll write again when I crash.
Andrew
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Oh no!
I know that “oh no” was not the spirit of your post, but I’m sorry to hear your tale. A friend is currently going through rehab after tearing his ACL, PCL and meniscus in a lawyer basketball game (my friend decided against suing ;).
Here’s hoping for good news. Or at least less-bad news.
And...
Yes, Bret Favre feels that way right now, I promise.
by stuntmonkeys on Dec 15, 2010 7:29 PM EST up reply actions
hah.
thanks for the good wishes, Stunt. Yes, hoping for less-bad news m’self. One way or the other, it will make interesting blog-fodder. A
by Andrew Heffernan on Dec 16, 2010 9:41 AM EST reply actions
some literary precedent
From James Dickey’s “Deliverance.” (Not suggesting this describes you, but maybe the last line does.)
Lewis wanted to be immortal. He had everything that life could give, and he couldn’t make it work. And he couldn’t bear to give it up or see age take it away from him, either, because in the meantime he might be able to find what it was he wanted, the thing that must be there, and that must be subject to the will. He was the kind of man who tries by any means — weight lifting, diet, exercise, self-help manuals from taxidermy to modern art — to hold on to his body and mind and improve them, to rise above time. And yet he was also the first to take a chance, as though the burden of his own laborious immortality were too heavy to bear, and he wanted to get out of it by means of an accident, or what would appear to others to be an accident. A year or two before, he had stumbled and crawled for three miles to get out of the woods and back to his car and then driven it home using a stick to work the gas because his right ankle was so painfully broken. I visited him in the hospital mainly because he had asked me to go to the woods with him and I hadn’t been able to go, and I asked him how he felt. “It’s luxury,” he said. “For a while I don’t have to lift weights, or work out on the bag.”
Experience
I read your article and couldn’t help but post on it. I am also an Aikido practitioner and in the past year I had an injury where I tore my ACL along with my meniscus (part of my meniscus is also missing but it is unclear if that is related to the injury). I didn’t injure myself practicing Aikido but while playing soccer (someone kicked my knee out).
Now you talked about toning things down because of the injury and approaching midlife and you’re okay with that. I thought I could give you a few thoughts on what my experience has been. I think I should mention that I am 22 as to give you a reference as to if my experience is something you can say is similar to your own. Also I used my quad tendon to repair my ACL, I tell you this because it should also be used to interpret my experience.
Luckily for me my doctor said that I would have a full recovery and be able to do everything I did before I tore my ACL. So that was a relief. The total overall total recovery takes a long time. Although I did finish my physical therapy in about 3 or 4 months, I am a little over 7 months of my surgery and my full range of motion is not quite back. For instance while practicing Aikido it is difficult and even painful for me to do seiza or backward roll after a technique (only on one side) because the angle is so extreme. Although this might because I used my quad tendon and it takes it a long time to regrow. But even with the time off with rehab and not quite being done yet, I find myself enjoying seeing the progress made in recovery more than I am sad about how I cannot do every little thing I used to do yet.
Finally to address your comment if anyone every feels this way, as far as taking everything easy goes, I feel that you will probably take it easy even if you don’t realize it. For instance, I am not as aggressive playing soccer as I used to be, and I think it’s purely psychological. It’s not like I’m afraid to do any of the things I used to. It’s more like I’ve build a habit of not doing certain things as I was rehabilitating my knee. Personally I think I would like to be a little more aggressive but overall I seem to be adapting my play in a way that allows me to still be effective without being aggressive in the same way. As for my Aikido practicing, I think I am back into the swing of things there and I feel like I will be completely back to normal when my full range of motion comes back.
So you may find you tone things down without even trying, which can be something you’ll easily be fine with. To me toning things down is fine as long as I get to continue doing the things I love.
I know what you mean
I recently had a similar knee injury and didn’t originally go to the doctor. I only did after the injury showed no improvement and I got a little depressed/scared that I had done some permanent damage. I was diagnosed with an IT Band strain and the doc said it would take a good bit of time and rehab to get it right again. But the fact that I could now see the light at the end of the tunnel was an amazing relief.
Been there, 20 years ago
I concur with the doc’s maybe. It all depends on what you want to do.
Tore my ACL 20 years ago playing basketball. I was a college student at the time – x-ray was negative, not near home, so never got any further eval or even rehab. So it’s not clear it was torn in that incident, but looking back, it almost had to be.
Over the next 3 years, my body compensated and muscled up to protect the knee. But after getting a swollen knee (and being on an HMO plan), I went to an orthopedist to get it checked. He actually couldn’t even do the normal twisting to diagnose an ACL tear (as I said – my body compensated with muscle support) and sent off for an MRI. ACL reconstruction later (and to the current guy rehabbing – you shouldn’t necessarily expect to be 100% ROM after 7 months, even with current surgery techniques – in fact, I still don’t have full ROM and never will).
The point being is that – you may not need surgery. I was even able to go back and play basketball, softball, bike, and do other sports without an ACL. You can go on. But you will also be at risk for possible additional trauma when you least expect it, as it isn’t as stable as it could be. Honestly, I would have continued on with my knee as it was if it wasn’t for the later bout of swelling (obviously because I injured it again).
Good luck with whatever is found and whatever decision you make.
Thanks for all perspectives.
And, funnily enough, I read Dickey’s book years ago and remember the passage about the Lewis character (that’s the role Burt Reynolds played in the movie) vividly. I remember feeling an affinity with that particular moment in the book and perhaps even thought of it as I was writing the post!
Appreciate all the feedback. Still no MRI—waiting till the new year because of—what else?—insurance concerns. Knee feels much better—stable, strong; I even forget now and then which one it was that I injured. But until I get the MRI I know the ligament may still be out.
by Andrew Heffernan on Dec 21, 2010 6:37 PM EST reply actions
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