ACL recon tomorrow

Hi all.

I'm a long time (years) lurker and occasional poster to RSS.

Tomorrow I have an ACL reconstruction (left knee, allograft) for a
chronic ACL injury originally sustained 10+ years ago. I'm actually
looking forward to getting it over with, hoping my knee will be better
in the end. Over the years the weakness in the knee (I ride regular)
has seemed to hold me back in my riding.

I ride a Donek Wide 165 and Clickers - though I'm going to ditch the
clickers in favor of the best fitting boots I can find and either a
pair of Drakes or the new Catek Freeride bindings. I'm not really
into jumping or tricks, I just enjoy carving (or approximating it as
best I can).

My OS says he likes to keep his ACL patients out of any sport
activities for 9 months post-op. That pretty much takes out this
coming season. I'm wondering though if I may be able to get out there
at 6 months so long as I take it easy.

Anybody with post ACL recon snowboarding experiences they'd like to
share?

elb wrote:
Hi all.

I'm a long time (years) lurker and occasional poster to RSS.

Tomorrow I have an ACL reconstruction (left knee, allograft) for a
chronic ACL injury originally sustained 10+ years ago. I'm actually
looking forward to getting it over with, hoping my knee will be better
in the end. Over the years the weakness in the knee (I ride regular)
has seemed to hold me back in my riding.

I ride a Donek Wide 165 and Clickers - though I'm going to ditch the
clickers in favor of the best fitting boots I can find and either a
pair of Drakes or the new Catek Freeride bindings. I'm not really
into jumping or tricks, I just enjoy carving (or approximating it as
best I can).

My OS says he likes to keep his ACL patients out of any sport
activities for 9 months post-op. That pretty much takes out this
coming season. I'm wondering though if I may be able to get out there
at 6 months so long as I take it easy.

Anybody with post ACL recon snowboarding experiences they'd like to
share?

elb

1st off - good luck with the op, you'll appreciate taking the time out to
get it done. I snapped my left ACL playing 5 a-sides and had the
reconstruction op Aug 99. I skiied previously and switched to boarding from
season 00-01 in an effort to avoid the lateral edge catch damage skiing can
do. I've had no ill effects and, after being a bit careful for the 1st
season - wearing a knee brace - my knee is as solid as it was previously. I
started out freeriding and spend most of my time in the park these days.
I've only had a few scares and they were down to me bricking it after a
twisting bale where the board stops and your body doesn't!

My specialist, who works for Celtic football club, put me through a 3 month
intensive physio regime and recommended that I'd get back to full active
sports ~6months which is what happened. I was off crutches after a month and
walking normally after 10 weeks. I carried on the self-physio (and still
do).

Take the advice of your post-op physio and if you do try for Feb 03 try out
an articulated knee brace - it'll give you a confidence boost. (there are a
load of ACL advice sites, just google it).

good luck, DB

Drug Buddy wrote:
My specialist, who works for Celtic football club, put me through a 3 month
intensive physio regime and recommended that I'd get back to full active
sports ~6months which is what happened. I was off crutches after a month and
walking normally after 10 weeks. I carried on the self-physio (and still
do).

In my experience, you should NOT be using crutches for a month.
Anything over a week should really just be carrying the crutches around
just in case. I hope the origional poste was doing pre-op PT as that
helped me out a bunch. I was jogging every day after 8 weeks, but it
still took over a year before I truely felt 100%.

Take the advice of your post-op physio and if you do try for Feb 03 try out
an articulated knee brace - it'll give you a confidence boost. (there are a
load of ACL advice sites, just google it).

To origional poster, if you go with a brace for early-on comfort, ditch
it as soon as you can. There's no better brace than strong muscles
around the knee, and wearing a brace won't help develop those muscles.

--
John Q. Sindell Jr.

http://jqs.pikapp.net

John Q. Sindell wrote:
Drug Buddy wrote:
My specialist, who works for Celtic football club, put me through a
3 month intensive physio regime and recommended that I'd get back to
full active sports ~6months which is what happened. I was off
crutches after a month and walking normally after 10 weeks. I
carried on the self-physio (and still do).

In my experience, you should NOT be using crutches for a month.
Anything over a week should really just be carrying the crutches
around just in case. I hope the origional poste was doing pre-op PT
as that helped me out a bunch. I was jogging every day after 8
weeks, but it still took over a year before I truely felt 100%.

Take the advice of your post-op physio and if you do try for Feb 03
try out an articulated knee brace - it'll give you a confidence
boost. (there are a load of ACL advice sites, just google it).

To origional poster, if you go with a brace for early-on comfort,
ditch it as soon as you can. There's no better brace than strong
muscles around the knee, and wearing a brace won't help develop those
muscles.

Dave, I now understand why RSS's audience has become a bit more 'selective',
in a Spinal Tap stylee, these days. Oh feck, FFS. It's nice that it's still
here though!

elb, hope you're doing well, keep on keeping on - 7 months to go!

DB

Dave, I now understand why RSS's audience has become a bit more 'selective',
in a Spinal Tap stylee, these days. Oh feck, FFS. It's nice that it's still
here though!

LoL...off season does bring 'em out !

elb, hope you're doing well, keep on keeping on - 7 months to go!

Likewise...sheeyit...he'll be through the op by now and boaking on the
post-operative anaesthesia as we speak :0)
S

Scott wrote:
elb, hope you're doing well, keep on keeping on - 7 months to go!

Likewise...sheeyit...he'll be through the op by now and boaking on the
post-operative anaesthesia as we speak :0)
S

Aye, when I came to I was off my face on whatever they'd given me - it was
great! 2 hrs later I was crying like a kid who'd lost his telly tubby. All a
means to an end and all that. As William Wallace said "this too will pass" -
or something like that. It's ****e then it's good then it's ****e again!

DB
(great to see y'all back scotty - how was BC?)

Drug Buddy wrote:
Dave, I now understand why RSS's audience has become a bit more 'selective',
in a Spinal Tap stylee, these days. Oh feck, FFS. It's nice that it's still
here though!

WTF is this supposed to mean?

--
John Q. Sindell Jr.

http://jqs.pikapp.net

Thanks to everyone for the encouragement.

I'm 2 days post-op now, and the pain is definitely better today.

I haven't had my first follow up with the surgeon yet, but he told my
wife immediately after the surgery that everything went very well. He
also told her that I have almost none of the meniscus on the outside of
my knee remaining, and osteoarthritis is setting in. But hopefully
stabilizing my knee with the reconstruction will help.

In case anyone is interested, turns out my surgeon was the head
physician at the Lillehammer Olympics.

I can already tell rehab is going to be a bitch. But happy thoughts of
getting back on my board should keep me going.

- elb

DB
(great to see y'all back scotty - how was BC?)
OMG :0)
Just brill ! wet toward the end but by then I was wandering around with
a big sh1t-eatin' grin most of the time...getting stopped in the square
by heads wanting to know where I was getting my gear ?!? LoL...Can't
beat Whistler on a good day.

Mike M. Miskulin wrote:

One last bit of advice - make sure you get into a PT program that
specializes in sports rehab.

mike

Aye, from the people I spoke to, at the time and since, the advice has been
the same - grap yourself a sports phsio whether it's winter sports,
basketball, football(soccer) etc. I guess we were all pretty lucky having
that advice from the start off. Things are a bit different over here -
national healthcare - if I hadn't been lucky enough to have Leach as my
surgeon, I was quite willing to splash some cash and hire my own sports
rehab. heh heh heh, on that note, I wasn't even given one of those cooler
things to to wrap round my knee after working it. I kept the same bag of
frozen peas wrapped in a dish cloth for 3 months!

DB