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.