A year ago today, memorial day weekend Sunday, about this time in the morning... The boring background... Never much of a motorcycle rider. But most everyone in the family has had them and ridden them. Before 1999 my total motorcycle time was 2 laps around the block on my fathers street bikes and one down the street and back on a dirt bike. Then in 1999 I was out in the real world making my own living, paying my own bills and came into a dilemma. I needed a new daily driver to get to work. The trusty stead was mortally wounded at just over 200k miles. So I went and bought a new KLR650. Learned how to ride it. For the most part daily driver for 2 years. Still have it for nice days and is just shy of 50k on the clock. All of it on the street. The other part of my transportation was a '69 Bronco that was my toy. Street legal and used for things the bike could not do. As I progressed I got other means of daily transportation as well until I had what looked like a low grade used car lot in front of my house. Somewhere in this mess I picked up an observed trials bike. Things degraded until I was never having any fun. Everything was broken or needed some sort of work. I finally had one of those "enough" moments. Sorted through my transportation (and other hobbies) and took a good assessment at what I had, what worked, what didn't, what it was worth, how much fun I was having with each (when I could actually use them) and made a plan. Sold off most of the used car lot, bought a good multi purpose daily driver. Kept the boat (whole different story). Kept the KLR swearing I will make it turn 50k then sell it. Kept the trials bike and started using it a lot more. I am not that good at riding off-road but I enjoy it and am getting a lot better at it. I started as a total beginner. About the only thing I had going for me was I knew where the gas, brake and clutch were and had some idea how to work them. Any off-road riding techniques were totally new to me. After a few years I got to the point that the old trials bike was a hindrance and picked up a nice new 2012 Sherco. I had that 2 months and was just getting settled with the new bike when... The injury... Memorial day '12 weekend was a memorial weekend indeed. Just as memorial as it was in '87 when I watched my neighbors truck roll into the lake, but no one was injured in that. Mine was a trials bike injury. It was in Northern AZ not far from Flagstaff. Few of us went and strung a little ribbon and made a few sections. I struggled at the sections, fell down a few times. A few weeks before I was riding in the same place and went down and used my knee to keep the new bike from hitting the ground too hard. I got some nice knee pads to keep from hurting it again. Thought I was doing the smart thing. Made it to the section I set up for myself. I made it fairly easy on myself. I don't remember the whole line, but the part I remember is a little wash I had to cross. Going one way it was down a 30° slope with a 6" ledge a couple feet from the bottom. A 30° slope up. Slight turn. Fairly easy novice line. In order to get the most out of setting up the sections we ran them both directions. First time through was dropping off the ledge and was OK. Second time was the reversed track. When transitioning up the grade I couldn't get the front wheel unloaded and stuffed it into that little ledge. Stuffed it quick enough I didn't grab enough clutch in time and stalled it. It was just right where the bike was sitting level, from wheel on the up slope, rear on the down slope. This put me way off the ground. The grass was deceiving as the solid ground was way under the top of the grass. I fell over and stuck my leg out to catch myself as anyone would normally do. But the altitude resulted in the leg hitting the ground hard. And the left leg was fully extended. It went down, there were a few popping sounds and a whole bunch of pain. The bike was picked off of me. I sat upright grasping my left knee in pain. Nothing else was hurting, if it was the pain of the knee overwhelmed everything else. No juices running out, good. Leg still looks straight, bone isn't sheared completely. OK, lets try to move. Go to stand on it and it collapses out from under me. Try again very carefully, hear another pop or two. Hurts like hell but I can move on it. I am not doing well but I am back to moving again. The group of friends are concerned but I am looking like I am shaking it off. Off to the next section, maybe 100 yards away. I will probably just sit this one out while things calm down. I go to climb on the bike and this is where reality sets in. I may have started the bike before throwing the leg over it, maybe not. I don't remember. What I do know is when I threw the leg over the bike the knee came apart and it was like someone took a baseball bat and took my knee out from under me. Down again. At this point I know something is REALLY wrong. My friends return, pick the bike off me, again. Pain levels are fully spiked now. I get a little tunnel vision. I am done riding for the day. Thankfully I got injured with friends. Also it was in an area where a truck could be driven right up to me. My bike was loaded up. I was given a shoulder to lean on. The truck driven to pick me up happen to be my own. Strip off the riding gear and see what is going on. Looking at both knees there isn't any visible signs of trauma. In fact there wasn't a scratch or a bruise at all. The knee pads worked great, no external injuries, they were all internal. At this point we are way behind in riding. I was in fact done. So we go back to the parking area and have lunch. The fact I drove myself down was a bit amazing. The left knee is the same one I use for the clutch pedal as the truck is a stick shift. So we sit around and eat lunch and discuss various options for seeing a doctor about the knee. Flagstaff is about half an hour away, Phoenix (which is a lot closer to home) is another 3 hours. So an hour of discussion and eating and the knee is still hurting bad. But it is stable. If it started swelling quickly or anything bad I would have been calling 911 quick. But I was doing good enough to assess that I was stable and decided to drive back to Phoenix. Everyone else concurred and off I went, and they went back to riding without me. The drive home wasn't too bad. I did need gas. It is such a good thing they have pay at the pump. I am old enough to remember before such a thing existed. On the way home I remember Matt, a friend/co-worker married a lady who worked in an orthopedic surgeon's office. I had actually been to the office once about 5 years prior. That was just a checkup on the knees as they made horrid crunchy noises but didn't hurt. I liked the office, the doctors, I had plenty of stories from my office about there office. So I called Matt up as I knew his holiday plans were to stay home with the new kids. I caught them and told them what was going on. Came to the conclusion that urgent care or ER would be nothing more then a long wait, an X-ray that the orthopedic surgeon won't use anyway, probably a prescription for some stronger pain pills and telling me to see a specialist along with a big bill. So I skipped the whole hospital thing and went home. I pulled the whole rig into the side yard, picked up a few essentials out of the truck and went into the house. Found that as long as I kept the knee bent it was stable. I had to walk in a squatted position. If I extended the knee straight there was no telling which way it would go. Monday... I live alone, my uncle lived nearby but I knew he was out for the holiday weekend as well. So Monday late morning when I knew he would be heading home I asked him to stop by and give me a hand. He thought I needed a hand hanging a gate I was building. What he didn't know was I needed him to unload the truck for me. Lots of research via Google. Tuesday... I didn't make it to work. I was calling the doctor's office every 5 minutes starting about half an hour before they opened until they answered the phone 45 minutes later. "we can make an appointment in 2 weeks":eek1. After pointing out that I can't walk, I am willing to come in and wait for a no-show. They manage to work me in 90 minutes later. I drove in, got a couple X-rays, knees pulled and twisted on the exam table. Verdict... Torn ACL They fitted me with and excessively expensive slip on knee brace and discussed options. The knee brace was great! I could walk upright again! Now what should I do? I was presented with plenty of options ranging from live with it to various surgery options. Start with the "live with it option". Surgery will be the same weather I did it that day or 5 years later, no rush. Back to work. I find out how many people have had torn ACLs. A LOT! Can I live without getting it fixed? By the end of the week I am doing well without the brace. But there is so much I am limited at. I call the doc back and ask to get the ball rolling on the rebuild. Get the authorization for an MRI, that takes a week. Find out I am getting an MRI the same day my sister-in-law is getting one for breast cancer. The results come back. Completely torn ACL, no other collateral damage. By the end of June the knee is a known unstable quantity. Having a buckle moment randomly about once a day. This will not do, surgery time. Go to work, talk with the bosses about the summer work load. Discuss recovery time with a lot of people. I am thinking I will be out for 2 weeks from all the other people who had it done. (how wrong I would be) Early July looks like a soft spot in the work load. This is looking good as I go to Vegas for SEMA every year at the end of October. I should be recovered enough to still attend that. July 2nd was picked as a surgery date. I didn't like the cadaver graft idea so much. Patella graft was chosen. My cousin who is a bit more medically knowledgeable came with me. Hated the no food or drink before surgery. No drink in AZ in July for an afternoon surgery isn't good. But it went through without any snags. I don't remember the surgery, which is a good thing. I do remember them handing me a set of crutches to get out to the car. Too bad I have never used a set before in my life. So I am learning to use crutches for the first time as they are trying to get me out of the office so they can go home for the night. Chris, thank you for getting me home that night and staying with me. It was a lot worse then what I thought it would be. Those ice filled knee chillers are the greatest things invented. I could tell when the ice was melted as the knee would start hurting a lot more. Vicaden and Percocet were the pain pills. Big bottle for big pain, little bottle for little pain. Started with the big bottle. For the next couple days it was a simple pattern. Every 4 hours a little food, new pills, fresh ice in the cooler, back to sleep. The home ice maker got a huge workout and couldn't even come close to making enough ice. My uncle was bringing a few of the big bags of ice a day. Matt and Steve from work brought a huge cooler full of ice from the cafeteria at work a couple of times. I didn't even get to unwrap the bandages for a week. Getting around the house was difficult. First couple of showers I thought I was going to rip the shower walls down hanging onto them like I was. Just taking a shower was exhausting and would wipe me out for an hour. For 10 days I never went outside. First time out was for the doctor's office visit. All was good, start physical therapy. So much for the 2 weeks out, I was way more messed up then I thought I was going to be. But I was recovering nicely. Got my handicap parking placard and started twice a week physical therapy. Therapy came nicely. At 2½ weeks since surgery I left the knee brace off as I left therapy and never put it back on. I was getting my flexibility back fast. Apparently I am way more flexible then most people. But I have never had strength. At the 3 week doctor office follow up I was without the knee brace. It was right after lunch and the doc was running late. I knew that from Matt's wife who worked in the office. I was in the exam room, sitting in a chair, legs crossed, playing on the phone when he came in the room. He just about broke out in laughter, totally amazed I could comfortably bend my leg that much, that soon after surgery. It did cause a few problems actually. Therapy was wanting to bring forward my exercise program, adding some impact exercises. The doc did not like this. Wait until the bone graft is fully set before putting impact exercises in the plan. A full month after surgery I finally went back to work. I still had 6 weeks of therapy while working. For the first week it was exhausting to make it to the end of the day. I could do everything I needed to do, but I was slower at it and had to plan carefully what steps to take to do it. Come October I did go to Vegas and walk around for 3 days at SEMA with nothing more then taking plenty of Advil. The recovery has been tapering off. I still can't kneel on the left knee. But I can do about half weight on it now. As for riding, I was told 4 months before starting again. So a few of the CAT rides I simply checked. At 3 months I cheated a little and rode the loop helping set sections but still only checked. At 4 months and 2 days I entered the November ride. Rode 1 of 3 loops and quit. Knee was hurting too much. New goal, finish 3 loops. So December I rode non-trophy beginner class just to get some peg time. Finished all 3 loops! Back up to my senior novice class. I had just stepped into senior Novice just before all this started. Now a full year later I am almost back to where I was riding before the injury. My left patella is only 18mm, for a normal person it should be 30mm. I have a custom made CITI brace for that knee. Knee brace is completely different then a knee pad. Since insurance will only pay for a brace on the injured knee the right knee was up to me. I don't have the pockets for a custom brace on the un-injured knee so a $250 off the shelf Astrik Cyto cell is used over there. I have a very nice set of knee pads, I might use them someday when laying tile. I can live with the current state of the knee. It does still tell me I f'ed it up from time to time. Back off, take a few Advil, continue with life. In total it has taken a year of my life. That year isn't just bike riding, it is everything. The boat rebuild is a year behind. Getting back into diving is a year behind. Landscaping the back yard is a year behind. Everything is a year behind. The cost of all this? ~$50k But I do have good insurance so out of pocket was only a few thousand. All the incidentals that don't add in very well as well. Financially I am a year behind as well. I did find out that the 2 screws in the knee are not enough to set off airport metal detectors. The scars are healing up nicely. Exercise (that I don't do enough of, I know) really does help. I am back to my riding goal of not being in last place in my class by the end of (this) year. I was only 4 points away on the last ride, it is possible! Life has pretty much returned to normal. The 10-14 month total recovery window is now upon me. I have not seen any doctors about the knee since the end of last year. I hope to avoid any more incidents like this, it wasn't pleasant. Life has returned to as normal as I can expect.
. good to hear you are doing well, great writing. I had ski accident 3 years ago and Doctor told me no more ski or motorcycle or what so ever bumpy...Not an option for me. Only way to get back to normal was exercise, exercise, exercise... any time I could. now my right knee is back to normal I just fell it's little weak when doing too much like running 20K or bicycling. Swimming is the best exercise I got as I could feel how strong I could push without risky injury. Remember, the body and mind are the two only mechanic system I know that improve dramatically when fully used... PS: Being the last guy is not an issue, don't push hard for that reason...enjoy the ride.
Several years ago I tore 2 of the 4 quadriceps attachments loose. You now have a year of healing in but if you are like me there is still healing going on. It took about 2 years to get to where I could drive more than 100 miles without stopping and walking around for a while. I guess what I am trying to say is it will still get better.
I am not pushing. Just setting a goal. If I hit it, great. Make a new one for next year that is a little better. Mid-pack? If I miss it, I can have the same goal for next year, again. Nothing wrong with that either. I am not going to punish myself, but I am not going to going to give up either. Now for that running a 20k. Not on my radar. I think you long runners are all a bit nuts. But the bicycling part surprises me. My doc told me bicycle is the greatest thing possible. I guess it probably has a lot to do with the type of injury. I still don't know my way around all the muscles and tendons in the leg, or arm, or back, or most of the rest of the body.
Interestingly enough, this weekend marks my 8th anniversary of tearing my ACL (and both meniscus). Not riding, but playing soccer back in High School. Kind of ruined my chances of being competitive in college, but in hindsight, that was probably a good thing. I had only been riding a few years at that point and was really missing my dirt bike (and the five other sports I would normally have been playing), but I'm glad I took the prescribed rehab path back to normalcy. Now, almost 10 years later, the knee feels fine. I also had the patella graft, and I think it's definitely the best in the long run for active people like us. It was definitely the full 10 or 12 months until I was sprinting and cutting again, and probably 18 until I felt confident and "normal" without a brace. Only a few things like squatting/folding my knees all the way and running down hills remind me that it's not the same as my good knee. I can't remember a riding related situation that gave me trouble with it. Just keep up with the rehab, work towards getting full range of motion (that will definitely come back to bite you if you don't), and ride safe!
Just a follow up. 3 years post surgery. It is as stable as I could ask for. When they said 10-14 months, they ment it. It was a full year before It leveled off into a stable condition. I can do anything I want to do with it. Still a little shy when it comes to stressing it. I am not willing to try wakeboarding or snowboarding. I will do full sprints down the hallways at work when running late for a meeting. If I work it real hard, it will take an advil that evening. Which isn't much of a surprise, it is only slightly more sensitive than the "good" knee. Typically if I am to the point of needing an advil, they both hurt, along with several other body parts. As for riding, I am still at it. Almost always with the knee braces. There are a few rare times I will leave them off. Just moving the bike around, no. Using it as transportation to spend an afternoon out checking other riders, I will leave them in the truck for that. If I am doing anything close to technical riding, they are on. I never wear them daily as per the doctors instructions. ONLY while riding the motorcycle. He does not want me to become dependent on them. Just as protection in high risk activities (hence not even going to try anything that involves strapping my feet to a lever). The last time I saw the orthopedic surgeon was 6 months after the injury and 5 months after surgery. I have no further follow up needed. I was just joking with my brother, he is the only one in the family not to have his knee opened up. Obviously myself, my father had surgery in high school, my mother had several orthoscopics about 20 years ago and just had a knee replacement, aunts and uncles all have scars. The long standing issue I have now is I can't kneel on the repaired knee as good as the other knee. The knee pads (yes the evil illusion of safety that got me into this) do get use now. when having to do kneeling work I use them. In the end it took a year out of my life to get back around to where I was. Surgery and recovery was way worse that I had predicted. Those who went back to work after a week, I have no idea how that could be done. It took a week before I could remove the bandages. Even then it was a bad case of cankle. It was 10 days before I stepped outdoors. Even after 4 weeks off I was nowhere near 100% back at work. The first couple of days I only got about 6 hours in and hid at my desk with a bottle of Advil for the last couple of hours. Watching my mother recover from the knee replacement. I was with her 6 weeks post surgery. I started pushing her through more physical therapy. In a week I could see marked improvement. That was probably a lot of what helped me. The initial at home exercises were not possible, I just did as much as I could. Kept at it. Worked up to what they wanted. They asked for twice a day. I was doing it 3 times a day, mostly out of boredom. If it started to feel like I wasn't getting as much out of the exercises I just added more reps or longer times. I wish I had the discipline to have kept with it. I was in the best shape of the last several decades of my life about 4 months post surgery. Got back into the habit of working too many hours getting home exhausted. Well that's the 3-year follow up. I'm not expecting any further changes at this point. Been stable for 2-years.
in 2000 I tore my left ACL, MCL and meniscus in a provincial rugby match. Doctors said the mcl would be fine with time but my meniscus and ACL required surgery. My car was a stick, had to clutch with my crutch and gas/brake with my right foot as normal for about 4 months. That was 15 years ago, I still wear my knee brace at times as my knee has never felt "Solid" again. Most days my knee cap will rotate out to the left requiring my to stand in an awkward position and lean on it until is pops back around. That used to be excruciatingly painful to do, but over time now I find it to feel much better being done than not. Glad to see youre setting goals and working to achieve them, I was 17 at the time of my accident with an attitude of I'll be fine. Never worked towards its health or recovery and will pay the price for that for the rest of my time on this rock.
I'm back! Yea I started this post. It was 5 years ago today I took out the knee. I don't tempt fate, I don't ride on Memorial day anymore. Still have the same bike. Still wear knee braces (one prescription, one off the shelf). Only wear them on the bike. Never for anything else. Doctor didn't want me to have one but I talked him into prescribing one for me. He was worried I would use it all the time and become dependent on it. He wanted me without it to build muscle to protect itself. I only use the knee brace as a protective device, not as a support device. They may have saved the knee since then, hard to say. Like asking if the seatbelt saved your life in a crash, how do you know if it did or didn't so long as you are hear now. Go back and crash again without it and see if it did save you? I know the knee has taken a few big blows or at least the knee brace did and I walked away. Enough that I will use them whenever I ride and only when I ride. However it had healed a couple years ago, it is still exactly the same today. A little numbness on the front outside that has never changed. I can't kneel on just that one knee but I can if I do both. Was like that a year after surgery. Come to think of it, it was about a year of recovery. After one year it hasn't changed a bit. I can't imagine not having it repaired.
Still recovering from broken femur. My saving grace? Airbag vest. Not a scratch from the waist up. Highly recommended. Thanks for sharing.
You're right about finding out how many people you know have torn ACL's once you tear yours! I tore mine playing soccer around 2.5 years ago, not long after coming back from a heal fracture and partial achilles tear that took me a year to get over. It didn't really hurt much right when it happened, but I knew something wasn't right. I tried to convince myself it was nothing and actually tried to stay in the game, which lasted around two minutes. The major instability hit me when I stopped at a store on the way home and basically couldn't walk. I was actually very lucky, as the next day I was diagnosed with a 75% ACL tear (one of the two bundles completely torn, the other halfway), MCL and meniscus. Both knees have multiple meniscus tears so I'm guessing that was already there. I decided to give up soccer and see if I could manage without surgery, and I'm glad I did. My doc said it will probably just form enough scar tissue to be stable, and fortunately I have pretty loose knees anyway, maybe the reason why I hadn't torn it sooner. I was in a brace for a few months and lots of anti-inflammatories, and within six months I was cycling, doing the elliptical machine, and doing a lot of swimming. I started playing tennis a couple of months ago and it's holding up great, so maybe I can get by without a reconstruction. I would highly recommend anyone with a partial tear give it some time before choosing surgery, unless they plan to continue high-stress activities. As the OP indicated, the reconstruction is a pretty major surgery with a long recovery time. Obviously in many cases it's necessary, but not always in the case of a partial tear, even a pretty bad one.
