My Knee is officially back

8 mile run this morning and my knee felt great the entire time. Now if I could just find my fitness again.

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Back to Running

I may have mentioned it before in this blog, perhaps not, but my wife, Yvette is a runner. She makes me so proud. I watch her get up and run 3 or more times per week with a group of ladies while it is still dark in the morning. However, she has always been frustratingly slow to run with.
So, this morning when we woke up in a house with no children ( they were at Grandma's house for the night as a gift to us so that we could celebrate our 11th anniversary) we decided to go for a run together. This was going to be my first real run on the road since my ACL surgery back in August.
I thought I was going to be running slowly, and likely walking periodically, based on runs we've done before. However, she's been training. So, we ended up running 5, very hilly miles complete with no walking. Wow, she's gotten a lot better.
That is very exciting for me. I love the idea of running with my wife and having some great conversations.
My knee did well. It is painful to run and every step is a bit of a mystery as to how painful it will be. Each time that right foot hits it hurts and every step is a different level of pain, but all in all it is bearable and my knee feels great after the run.
So hopefully, this means I can start working my way back. I actually put off running quite a few times out of fear, not wanting it to hurt so much that I wouldn't want to run anymore. So today quelled that fear.

12 weeks Post op and all is well

I just left my orthopedic surgeons office ( the best doctor in the area, in my opinion, Dr. Ted Gregorius www.empireortho.net ) for my 12 week post-op appointment and everything looks great. Physical therapy has been doing its job and I am healing on schedule.
Dr. Gregorius says that I can start in-line running on a treadmill next month and should be able to be back to full activity, including cutting sports ( read: Muay Thai Kickboxing ) at month 6. I'll get fitted for a custom brace that I'll have to wear for a year after that when exercising and we are trying to figure out a solution to what I will wear while rolling jiu jitsu as no one will roll with me with a fiberglass brace on my knee. We'll come up with something.
The best part of today's appointment is that I can start pushing a little harder know to work on growing the muscle mass back in my leg. Weeks 8-12 are precarious weeks with an allograph ( tendon harvested from a corpse)while it attached to my body, but know that week 12 is past us, I can start putting more strain on it. Yeah! I can really start working on getting the muscle mass back that I lost while being on crutches for 6 weeks.

So, things are going well and according to schedule and perhaps this blog will return to a blog of crazy athletic endeavors again, soon. Cheers!

Walking without crutches

Today I woke up and decided to ditch the crutches. The physical therapist said I could as long as I keep them around in the event that I have to do a lot of walking or prolonged standing. I am able to walk, albeit tentatively, pretty well. I have to fight the desire to limp and try to use the leg corrrectly, but all-in-all, it is going well and I am excited to be on the path to recovery.
Jiu Jitsu classes start back up next week. Not really. 5 more months until that is even possible, but at least I am able to start building back my legs for now.

I go for a walk ( sort of )

I had my 6-week post-op appointment today and am officially able to start weight bearing on my right leg. I get to start with my brace on and crutches wtih a goal to be crutchless and braceless in 7 days. My first steps were scary and painful. Every step burns my foot since it hasn't been stepped on in 6 weeks and after only a few hours, my leg is exhausted. I am heading to my first physical therapy session in my new status as soon as I finish typing this and will let you know how it went.

Chris

Exactly how I blew my ACL

For those of you that have asked, I thought I'd post the video that shows exactly what I was doing when I blew my ACL. As you watcht this video, I would have been the guy in the red/black top. At 1:38 in the video he taps due to the pressure from the submission. Because I was pretty flexible, I did not tap. As soon as I realized that I didn't have to tap, I attempted to yank my right leg out of the lockdown that he had on it with his legs. Because my ACL was already torn pretty significantly ( a fact that I did not know at the time), and because he held the lockdown perfectly and straightened his legs to tighten it down even more when I tried to pull out ( the perfect response), my knee dislocated momentarily and blew the ACL. This would not normally have been the outcome and I beleive that if I had a proper knee at the time, it wouldn't have been the case. I thought this video would better illustrate what I've tried to explain to many of you.