I've been pretty frustrated with the progress of my knee since surgery. It is still stiff and today the temperature outside was so low today that my knee just ached. I learned a little more about knee injuries (and one more way that my whole injury was care was bungled).
It all started because one of our new patients had a similar injury as mine: ACL, MCL and meniscus... but with a little extra - PCL.
This new information has to do with the MCL. This is the ligament that runs down the medial (inside) part of the knee. Dale was telling me that you only have one chance if you injure your MCL to get it to heal down right. When you get an MCL tear, there is a decent enough blood supply that unless it is really bad, it is normally left to heal on it's own. However, if you're up and around on it too soon - even walking, it may cause it to not heal down as tight and you'll continue to have some laxity around that part of the knee. This is especially true if you have injury to additional ligaments that make the leg more unstable- walking on an unstable leg (such as one without an ACL) will make the MCL likely to heal down even more lax.
Naturally, I found this a bit alarming. I had a fairly significant MCL injury in addition to my ACL rupture. And then I was walking around without crutches for the entire month between injury in surgery. No one immobilized me. The emergency room doctor let me walk (well hobble) out on my own.
It turns out though, the rules don't exactly apply to me. Because I got a stiff knee, I have all this scar tissue that makes it very stable. So it turns out, all the mismanagement of my originally injury has been taken care of by the mismanagement of my post surgical rehab!!! So I guess when people say that everything happens for a reason, they are right.
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