Me and My Knee - part 1

I recovered from a knee injury last year... I thought I would pen down the experience finally now when it is almost over... Being a long story and my desire to add too many small (and may be insignificant, but then its my blog) details, I realised that I can not fit it into one post and hence decided to break it into parts.. here is the first one.

I went out to a project outing on the fateful Saturday, the 21st June 2008 (thats 2 days into 27th year!!). The project party was at outdoors, at a place called Anand Valley, around 2 hours away from Pune. After playing foosball (the game that Chandler and Joey keep playing in F.R.I.E.N.D.S.) for quite some time (and a mixed winnings), we proceeded to play Volleyball. I was playing volleyball only for the 2nd time in my life. After quite some time of ball-watching, something bit me and I tried a smash... The moment I landed on ground, I realized something is wrong with my left knee, as I didn't feel anything below my left knee. I hobbled out of the ground, tried bending and stretching my knee and decided to rest for a while. I was even able to walk without support then...

Within few hours, I realized that I am no more able to bend my knee and it was swelling quite rapidly. Being so far out of Pune meant that for me to return back home, the entire touring party would have to come back home... As I was able to sit down and relax (just was not able to walk anymore), I decided to wait it out till the evening leaving time. So I somehow changed into my shorts, which I had thankfully carried with me for rain dance in the evening, and decided to stay put.

Eventually, I reached home at around midnight by which time everybody home was quite anxious and scared too at what might have happened. Given the history of our project (1 ligament injury every year) I was kind of aware of what had gone wrong.
I went to my physician next day,who suggested waiting for the swelling to go down but then recommended to an orthopedic surgeon the next day. The Surgeon, upon seeing my swollen knee (I was able to wear only shorts, if that gives you any idea), decided that there was some blood present in the joint, due to internal injury. So he applied some local anasthetic to my knee, and then started taking the blood out using a BIG injection with a huge needle. Boy, that was a bit scary. Plus when he would scrape the bone, I could feel it. He later educated me that the anesthetic does not affect the bones. He took out around 80Cc blood from my joint (that means he pierced my leg 8-9 times to take out most of the blood) but then my knee started looking almost like a normal one, albeit a clean shaven knee :). Further, he sent me for an MRI scan to DMH (Dinanath Mangeshkar Hospital). But before that, I was given a walking stick and a walker as well, and was strictly told to move around only when necessary (u know when). When I reached home, getting up to the third floor was another challenge. I am not that light weight to be carried up by anyone and of course, when my building was constructed, the concept of a lift was considered to be a fancy one... So, I had to go up 3.5 floor (45 steps to be exact) by just jumping on my good right leg. On day 1, it took me around 20 mins to reach home using the stick and by the time I reached home, both my right leg and left hand, who were carrying my weight were hurting like anything. That was a taste of times to come... My Mom was already going into shock, seeing me coming up like that. She later told me how horrified she was looking me like that. Her image of me was of running up and down the stairs in a flash and here I was not even able to walk on my both legs.. well, it had scared me too big time... The next day, we went for the MRI scan in a wheel chair, imagine my poor Mom!

The MRI staff made me change into hospital gown, thereby removing anything remotely metallic and then wrapped me into a blanket and slid into the MRI machine. I slept peacefully for next one hour and woke up with a start when suddenly the machine went quiet, realizing that the procedure is over.
The scan confirmed my worst fears, that one of my AC Ligaments was torn and the MC Ligament was partially damaged. (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anterior_cruciate_ligament). I was given two options; either to go for a reconstruction surgery or to go for plain physiotherapy and no surgical option. More on that in part 2...