The speech you need to hear if you tear your ACL

So you’ve torn your ACL.

The number of expletives you think or say is directly proportional to the amount of time it will take you to get back to normal: 10 swears, 10 months. If only this were true. There are many variables in play when you “blow out” your knee ,including your age, fitness, the complexity of the tear (multiple ligaments and meniscus), and what kind of athletic level you want to return to. There are more still, but these are some of the basic ones. It is an injury that can happen as a result of a hit or just a wrong step. It can happen to finely-tuned athletes, car accident victims, and weekend warriors. It’s one of the only injuries in pro sports where you’ll see a grown man cry when he knows he’s done it, even before any MRI.

It is difficult.

People say stupid things to you after you’ve done it. Your brain will say some pretty stupid things too, but you have to learn about the injury, the surgery, and the rehabilitation. Your brain can be trained, stupid people can’t. In some ways, the rehabilitation process is actually easy, because everything is outlined for you. Your surgeon has the easy part, the fancy carpentry that puts Humpty Dumpty back together again. Remove damaged part, install new part, test it, and voilà. Get a good surgeon: talk to a few, don’t rush. You need to like the way they talk to you and good statistics help, too, lots of ACL recons a year, like a hundred. I liked my surgeon because he was exceptionally confident, direct, and clear. My surgeon was Dr. Asnis, who also happens to be the team doctor of the Boston Bruins. He’s a Boston big shot, but totally nice and approachable. He recommended an allograft (cadaver graft) because of my age (39 at the time). He also was 39 and said if he had to have his ACL reconstructed, that’s what he would do. Find the right fit for you. I tore my ACL playing coed softball. I’ve played basketball, soccer, and other sports where you think tearing your ACL is much more likely, but it was softball that got me. It was a classic ACL tear scenario, grounder up the middle, at second base I move to my right, ball ricochets to the left, I react, plant, push off, foot stays, brain wonders why, knee does something awful, brain realizes and almost passes out, and then I went down. This was in May 2010. Surgery was a few days after July 4, after much prehab.

Now for the hard part: the post-surgery rehab.

Your goals are clear: to walk, run and jump again. Physical therapists have this process down pat. Because my work schedule is a pain in the butt, I was passed around to several therapists at New England Baptist. Listen to them, do your exercises. This is a marathon and not a sprint. This will take time and more patience than you could ever imagine. Forgive yourself when you struggle, reward yourself when you conquer. Take pleasure in the small victories, like walking without a limp—you do have to learn how to walk again for real, that is no exaggeration. Go out to the track at 7 a.m. when it’s 15 degrees F, put your brace on, and run slowly. Do it once, do it twice, feel the blisters on your brace form, adjust your brace, run some more, take it off when you are done, and notice the wet noodle your knee is afterward. Ice, rest, then repeat in a few days; go farther and faster day by day, week by week, month by month, even year by year. One day you’ll leave that brace behind, even for skiing, and your reconstructed knee will feel stronger than your “good” knee, as if you never tore your ACL in the first place. But that scar is there, a reminder of what you’ve done, a narrow badge of courage and resilience and strength.

Your athletic life is not over.

I was told by some I wouldn’t ski again, might have trouble running, knee wouldn’t flex the same as the unreconstructed knee. All of it was completely incorrect, even the last part that was said by one of my physical therapists. While I don’t play softball anymore, mostly because I don’t need a reckless jackass sliding into my knees at second base, I do participate in sprint triathlons. I was a horrible swimmer, never on a team as a kid, but since I’ve torn my knee I’ve taken classes to become somewhat competent. I’ve completed two sprints and haven’t felt a peep from my knee in either. I’ve run several 10ks, knee doesn’t say a word. Your athletic life is not over when you tear your knee; in fact, I think I became a better, more dedicated athlete after I did it.

Don’t go it alone.

Recovering from injury and surgery is not only physically demanding, it’s mentally demanding as well. There’s no reason to go through it alone. It definitely helps to connect with others who are going through the same thing as you are and get some inspiration and guidance.