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.