17th June 2009
In an unfortunate event of mugging and assault, I severely damaged my left knee.There are four ligaments in and around a knee: ACL, PCL, MCL, and FCL. ACL and PCL corss each other and are at the center of the knee. They help prevent excessive forward and backward movement of the knee. MCL and FCL are around the knee and prevent sideways movement of the knee. Lastly, there is a meniscus that acts as a shock absorber and prevents rubbing of thigh and shine bone and, thereby prevents arthritics.
In my case, I completely broke ACL and MCL. Also, the lateral meniscus got displaced but the extent of its damage can only be determined during surgery.
19th June – 25th June
I saw four orthopaedic specialists, each having a different opinion, suggestion and a rational. Below is a table comparing their suggestions and arguments.
| Specialist | Saw on | ACL Reconstruction | MCL Reconstruction | Fixing Meinscus | Surgery Time | No. of Surgeries |
| 1st | 19th June | Yes | No – grows naturally | Yes | After swelling goes down – difficult to operate | 1 |
| 2nd | 23th June | Yes | Yes | Yes | After swelling goes down – difficult to analyze and operate and let the knee heel by itself for sometime | 1 |
| 3rd | 24th June | Yes | Yes | Yes | After swelling goes down | 2: ACL surgery should be followed by leg extension physiothearphy. Whereas MCL surgery should be followed by giving a knee rest for two-three weeks. Thus both cannot be operated at the same time |
| 4th | 25th June | Yes | No: grows naturally | Yes | As soon as possible. The major concern for him is lateral meinscus. If not treated soon, lateral meniscus might get more damaged increasing chances of arthritics | 1 |
Jun 26th 2009
I decided to go with the fourth specialist. However, If one goes with the above table, the fourth specialist has a very unconventional beliefs. In contrast to all other specialist, the fourth specialist has suggested for a surgery as soon as possible. Nevertheless, my decision to stick with the fourth specialist is based on the fact that he is affiliated with big sports team and specializes in ACL reconstruction. Another big motivation is that I wan’t to get rid of this knee pain as soon as possible and getting surgery quickly done will help with alleviate this problem.
June 30th 2009
Follow up meeting with the fourth specialist. To reduce swelling, the doctor took out some blood from the knee. This helped both in reducing the pain and swelling
July 1st 2009
Surgery started at 1:15. Doctors gave me general anesthesia and bored three holes in my knee. A cadaver was used to reconstruct ACL. Doctors were able to salvage lateral meniscus.
July 2rd 2009
Follow-up meeting with the specialist. The specialist saw the knee and asked his assistant to take out some more blood from my left knee to reduce swelling. Gave me some instructions and asked to visit him again after a month
July 3rd 2009
Started using CPM. The other machine, ice-therapy machine, was not so useful. I found using regular ice pack to be more convenient.
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. However, now, I have to iron my clothes everyday.