The First Seeing

Today I finally got to go back to the doctors to talk to them about my knee. They told me it was a success and that I should make a full recovery. Also today I got to see my knee for the first time today it was exciting to see since its been trapped in a wrap for a week. They cut it off and cleaned my leg up so the dry blood would not be on it anymore. Then I noticed my leg was all bruised, but really I thought I was just turning yellow for some reason. Now I am trapped in this brace for another full week, but at least my leg can breath now and I can see it.

The other important thing is what they really did and why I have so many cuts around my knee. They made a total of 7 different insertions or well areas that they cut me open. These insertions were used to; feed water in, feed water out, scope to see knee, 2 for tools for the knee, camera for hamstring, and tools for the hamstring. I know, so many things that must be done for a surgery, but then again years ago they would cut your knee wide open. So I am thankful they make it less noticeable now a day.

Next week I get my stitches out, I am quite happy about this too. I will get back to you next time I got something on my mind. There has not been much going on then laying around that’s all. If any other questions just ask me if you want.

Fun In the Brace

Here are some before and after pictures from me before being in brace and after. The before picture is in my bed i was being take care of in before and after surgery. The others are just outside at other places after my surgery. All I have to say is its like carrying around a small child wrapped around your leg. I have to be in this brace for a week and then I get a different one after that. Right now I am still just laying around doing nothing really, however I will get some school work done soon once I can think straight.

The day after

So today is the day after my surgery, I was going to try and write a blog the day of my surgery but it didn't work out. The surgery was a success, I did not die or lose my leg so I was happy about that. My knee still hurts, but that is normal for right now.

I arrived at the hospital at 5am on April 1st, the darkest hour of the night that is. I put on my single piece of clothing they make you wear and laid in bed till they came an got me. Then they pumped me full of drugs and brought me into the surgery room, which reminded me of a horror film. All I remember was seeing like 8 people, being put on a small bed, and passing out.

Right after passing out I woke up, I had this huge and heavy brace that covered 4/5 of my leg, I was not happy. My coach then came and got me and I was on my way to get my medication and sleep my whole day away. After my coach dropped me off I went to stay at my buddies house and just been relaxing since. I will put some pictures up tomorrow that I have taken of my leg and such.

Tomorrow

So tomorrow is the big day for my knee and myself. I also have the luxury of getting up at the darkest hour of the night, 5 am. It is only a day surgery so I will be out of there by the afternoon and ready to rest the week away on my crutches.

My leg shaving was a very successful mission. Silky smooth in less then 25 minutes, I even surprised myself. This was only due to using an electric razor to take the long length in hair down. Also tonight I will be writing on my leg to make sure they do the right leg because I have heard some awful stories.

The visit with the doctor today was a success, he told me that he could take pictures from the surgery and put on a CD. Also we went over some paper work and said that I could lose my leg, but slight chance not too. We both laughed and then he said that you might also die from going under the gas. This just made me want to do the procedure even more now.

When all was done, I had to give a very quick blood sample and urine test, and then we headed back to the school. Where I enjoyed my last day of walking around as much as possible because I get to use lovely crutches tomorrow.

2 Days Left

So today I have 2 days left before my surgery. I am really not that nervous for it, but who really is until they are at the hospital. These last few days I have just been trying to enjoy the fact of being able to walk. The reason this is because if you have ever used crutches before they are horrible and aggravating. On top of that I have been just upper body at the gym, which I will have to give up for only a week or two hopefully. I will probably get many looks when I go back to the gym on 2 crutches but hey at least I am there doing something.

I have discovered something that made me think of an idea. This idea is that I am going to shave both my legs. The reason I came up with doing this is because I have heard that the hospital only does half of the one leg. So why would I want to look bad with half of a leg shaved when I can do both on my own and look good.

Also, I got my meeting tomorrow with my doctor to go over a few things so I will let you know how that goes. I am going to try and persuade them into doing a few things for me if I can for my dad. Other then that I will get back to you tomorrow with how my legs and the pre day meeting went.

Good vs Bad

Since my injury I have contemplated on whether it was for a good or bad reason. Surprisingly I have actually come up with more good reasons then bad, does it mean it happened for a reason? Well I think things do happen for a reason really, because without obstacles we would have nothing to overcome in life.

I will start with why I think it is bad that I injured myself this year first then say why I think it is good. So there were really only two things so far that I have come up with for bad reasons. One being, that I will have to be on crutches for a few weeks after my surgery. This will make me unable to do cardio vascular activities after three months of rehab. The other being my summer season, it is my last year to be able to throw at the junior level. This will make me unable to throw at the Canadian Junior Nationals and defend my title This is being held at Prince Edward Island also and I have never been there before too. I will also not be able to attend the Junior Pan America Games located in Trinidad either or break any records if I could have.

Now onto the good, I have come up with plenty of good things that I think will make me become better in the end. For my rehab, it will make my knee stronger after and make me have to stretch more then I did before. I am not going to lie I really never did that much of stretching so it will be a good turn around. Another thing with the rehab is that once my knee gets better after surgery I will have to do cardio workouts for my knee. This is to strengthen my knee, but it will also help me get into better shape then I was because I never did much running ever. So in the end I think overall as an athlete it will help me to become better then I ever was.

It is always better to look on the positive side of things when you are hurt because if you don’t you might fall off track. People have always told me I am going to hurt myself with how I throw; I guess it decided to come true. I just think that now I know that my way of throwing had a negative effect, I will have to learn how to throw with my foot in the right place. This is just and obstacle to over come, never give up and never surrender.

Still Keeping In Shape

Since my injury I have been unable to do my daily routines like I have been doing the last 6 months on the track and off the track. With being unable to do what I did before I my injury I had to come up with something else to do. The result of this came to a lot of upper body, so it would consist of arms, shoulders, back and abs.

I have not come up with an exact program yet because my surgery is in one week. This makes there no point in getting into a routine when I wont be able to train for a few weeks after getting surgery. Each day total I do maybe about 90 minutes of training just to get a good workout in.

First, every time I go to the training room I do a certain exercise before and after my ice, stimulation, and stretching. The certain thing I do is 4 sets of chin-ups, I started with 5 repetitions the first week I hurt myself. I do chin-ups with my hands facing forward, backwards, and alternating. Now my second week in it I am doing 7 repetitions, by adding one each week it will push my limits slowly and help me get over my fear of chin-ups.

Other then that each night I go to the gym located in the recreation center. I start and end with the same chin-ups, and also dips of the same sets and repetitions. Besides that I do a mixer of 5 different arm exercises each time, usually with 3 sets of 12 repetitions. Then in-between each set of exercises I do 50 crunches, I keep doing this until I reach a total of 300 crunches overall. It’s not the best workout I have done, but it’s all I can really do at this stage in time. If anyone has ideas on other stuff I could or should do just let me know.

Daily Life In The Training Room

Since my injury on my knee, I have been going to the training center each day, which is located at my university. The reason I am doing this even before my surgery is that first you have to be declared ready for surgery with the mobility and flexibility in your knee. So each day I go there, rehab and stretch, I am going to explain more in depth what stuff I am doing and why its being done. To start off each session when I go to the training center, I lay down on one of the medical tables they have and get ready for my daily routines. They set me up by putting me in this set up like this picture shows, which was from today’s session. They elevate my knee, put ice around it, put stimulation pads on it, and wrap it tightly together with a wrap.

The reason they do these certain things to my knee all serves a purpose as I will describe. The first thing they do is elevate your knee, the reason they do this is because it keeps the injured body part elevated above the heart. While this is going on you ice the knee and this will further help reduce swelling. The other thing they do is put stimulation pads around the knee, this contracts the muscle via electrical stimulation, it helps strengthen the affected muscle around the knee. They do this for 20 minutes each day because if you ice for more then 15-20 minutes you could cause further damage to the tissue, including frostbite, by icing for too long.

By doing this it helps me reduce the healing time a little bit each time. After I do the ice and stimulation, they make me do a few stretches. The types of stretches I do are; putting my foot on something a bit higher then the table and make my knee go straight and put my leg off the table making it straight, then bend it to a 45 degree angle or less under the table. Lastly the most painful one I am doing right now is when they put an ankle weight on my ankle and I lay on my stomach with just a bit passed my knee hanging off it. I do this for 10 minutes each day and I say that I definitely really feel the burn while I do this stretch.

This is basically what I have been doing for the last two weeks for rehab. I will do this for another week and a half until my surgery date because the better it is before the easier it is to recover quicker after. I really just want to get the surgery done because I already know the first two months are the worse after getting an ACL surgery. So I just want them to fly by, which I hope they do but that’s life, got to take it one day at a time. Hope you enjoyed hearing what I have been doing for my rehab as of right now.

What Is An ACL And Lateral Meniscus Tear?

Today I want to educate you on what really an ACL tear is and also what a Lateral Meniscus tear is too. The reason I want to do this is because it will give you a better understanding on what has happened to my body. I will cover all I know and add some links in from where I get the information from incase you want to look more in it.

The symptoms that someone may have an ACL tear are mostly when an athlete suddenly pivots causing excessive rotational forces on the ligament. Don’t forget you can do this in every day life; it is just mostly common during sporting activities. For instance other mechanisms that can cause an ACL tear include severe trauma and work injuries. Individuals who experience ACL tears usually describe a feeling of the joint giving out, or buckling--patients also often say they hear a "pop."

Now that I have talked about the symptoms I want to move on to the signs and talk about myself and how they relate. Sudden giving way of the knee, well I must say when I was about the throw and it happened I dropped to the ground like a sack of potatoes and the javelin flew about 5 feet. Hearing a “pop” at the time of injury, when I heard the large pop sound I fell to the ground because I knew my leg was hurt and that I should not finish the throw. The way I would say how it basically went down was if you were to take a pickle jar and twist it till it opens. Imagine the lid being my thigh, the bottle being my leg, and the opening pop sound of the jar being my ACL completely tearing. The other two are a sudden swelling of the knee joint and pain in the knee when walking. Well lets just say after it popped I couldn’t even bare to walk on it one bit because I thought it was going to break because the big pop sound I heard. My knee really did not swell when it occurred but the next day it like doubled in size so once I realized that I had all the signs that’s when I went to get my MRI to affirm the hypothesis. Here is a link if you want to learn more on this topic too. http://orthopedics.about.com/cs/aclrepain/a/acl_2.htm

The other part of my knee that I tore was my lateral meniscus, which really I did not know anything about or heard of it really before I had this injury. There are two menisci in your knee; each rests between the thigh bone (femur) and shin bone (tibia). The menisci are made of tough cartilage and conform to the surfaces of the bones upon which they rest. One meniscus is on the inside of your knee; this is the medial meniscus. The other meniscus rests on the outside of your knee, the lateral meniscus.

Now that you know about what a meniscus is now I will elaborate it to myself. I tore the lateral meniscus, which is located on the outside of my knee. The doctor told me it is 90% completely tore, but will not know until we go into the knee to see the real damages. Basically what they will try to do if it is slightly torn is stitch it, but if its torn to the center they will shave the cartilage off that is damaged. For instance, imagine to pieces with a rubber guarding the two from touching each other, if you shave some of the rubber guard what is going to happen. Well what is going to happen to my knee is that my bones will start to rub against each other if it is bad as I heard, but not 100% on that. Here is a link if you want to learn more on this topic too. http://orthopedics.about.com/cs/meniscusinjuries1/a/meniscus.htm

With this quick overview I have given you on what an ACL and Lateral Meniscus tear is I hope you will be able to understand more about my blogs as I keep posting them. Each day I will either talk about facts that I am learning and questions I may have besides my day-to-day activities. The reason I am going to do this is so I just don’t give a day in the life of wiley collins each day, which may tend to get boring after a while. So if any topics I should cover just let me know.

First Blog

So my dad today told me that I should start a blog on this website, and me being a good son I did. This blog is going to be about my ACL and the journey I will take to come back from it. Just to get you up to date on my life as it is, this is how it went. On March 9th 2009, it was just another day at the track-practicing javelin, but this day was different because a tragedy to myself occurred. The way it went down was during a normal throw at practice where I was trying to get a good meet quality throw in that went bad. I hit the finish awkwardly, my right foot got stuck and my torso/knee kept going until I heard a large pop sound, and then fell hard to the ground in pain. Added a picture of me for you to see what a good position looks like an to image what mine could of been like during the throw.

I got it looked at that day by a few people saying it may be an ACL tear but would not know until I went to the hospital. The next day I went to the hospital and got an X-Ray and also a MRI. One week later I went back to see what the damages were, the doctor told me that I completely tore my ACL and tore my lateral meniscus also. This last Friday I went back to see if I was ready for surgery or not and they said I was cleared to go. I laughed when they gave me the surgery date and said "You guys better not pull any pranks on me", because it ended up being on April 1st, which is April fools day.

Since the injury I have been doing 5 days a week of rehab Mondays through Fridays to get my mobility back. They told me the better it is before the surgery, the easier it is to get back after the surgery. Since I can no longer train for my event and do Olympic lifts and run, I have been doing mostly upper body, consisting of abs, triceps, biceps, back, and shoulders. From this day on I am going to post a blog everyday, these blogs will be about my daily routines that go on. Which may include the workouts I do, rehab, and anything else I can think of. If there are any questions about anything just post and I will get back to you as soon as possible, hope you enjoy.