6 Weeks Update of my Knee

Roughly 3 weeks ago on the 5th of October, I had an MTB bike accident and in the process I ended up injuring my left knee. I was actually attempting to Manual during which I realized that I was about to lose my balance. I wanted to bail out from the Manual, so I tried to pull the bike completely to the front with me jump landing behind the rear wheels, but the bailout got totally out of control and eventually I ended up twisting my left knee soon after the jump.

It was such a pain for the next 5 to 10 minutes. It kind of subsided, and I thought I could get back on my bike again (What a stupidity from me). As soon as I got on to my bike and tried to put my left leg down to balance the bike, I had a very sharp excruciating pain, and I could not balance any more with my left leg and fell down on the street. This is when I realized that there is something seriously wrong with my knee. I managed to limp, tow my bike back home. I was scared to think that I would have inflicted some fractures around my knee. Well, at that point in time I did not know anything about ligaments. All I knew was that I could have either fractured my knee bones or twisted my knee bone. How stupid! After about 2 hours, I went to a hospital that treats patients with emergency needs.

I had an X-Ray which thankfully confirmed no fractures or whatsoever. Well, by this time I could not neither fully flex my left leg nor bend it completely. The doctor then administered some bandage and asked me to check with an Ortho as he was suspecting some injury to the ligament. Given that it was a Friday, I had to wait until Monday so that I could make some appointments with an Ortho nearby. Saturday and Sunday was when I did tons of research and educated myself about knee ligaments. After understanding ligament injuries, I had sort of mixed feelings - one a feeling that said, ligament injury is very common among sports, the other - it takes loads of time to recover completely (What an irony here - it just takes a couple of seconds to tear a ligament, it takes about a year to completely heal from it). Come Monday, I quickly managed to make an appointment with a nearby Ortho and he sent me for an MRI as he was suspecting ACL tear.

Fast forward 10 days, I had the MRI done and the results from the MRI centre was suggesting that I have a partial ACL tear, minor bone bruises, fluids build up in the joints, small baker cyst. No cartilage damage and no Meniscus damage. I took the MRI results back to my Ortho and he was just pushing me to get it surgically corrected. This was pretty strange as I asked him if I could try a Physio rehab first and then decide on surgery, but he was adamant and just blindly asked me to get a surgery done as soon as possible to fix my ACL. I was not happy about it, so I went and had a second and third opinion where in they told me to wait until the bone bruises go away and then I could still decide if I want the surgery or not!

So roughly after about 3 weeks, I started with Physio sessions. I still do not have the full Range Of Motion (ROM) on my left leg, but everyday I see some very minor improvements - very minor though! Everyday I dream as though I'm walking normally without crutches. An ACL injury is something that definitely both physically and mentally affects you, but you should just take care that the injury does not take over your mind and that you are in control of it!