Day 30

The corner, the one that they told me I would turn at some point during my recovery, the one that would be the start of easier rehab and accelerated improvement, the one that I had been looking forward to for weeks, yes that corner, it turns out, is a myth.

Like any good myth, it sounds plausible enough, maybe even likely. But the truth is, there is no corner to turn. It just doesn’t exist. Recovery, if it must be described in comparative terms, is like hiking up a long, tedious trail. Progress sometimes comes easily and other times it is very difficult. Overall, ground is gained only gradually. Those who have been through ACL injury, surgery, and recovery often refer to the experience as a journey. It's now more clear than ever that the vast majority of time and dedicated effort required over the course of that journey is spent in recovery.

Typically when people ask me how I am doing, I invariably say, “I'm better”. And then, as if accuracy was an important element in responses to polite, largely rhetorical questions, I sometimes clarify that I don’t mean ‘all better’, just better than I was last week. And that last week I was better than I was the week before. And so on. For the most part, as long as I can keep giving that answer, I don’t really need the mythical corner after all.

The reality is that I have made some significant improvements over the past few weeks, the most dramatic of which is a welcome reduction in pain levels. In fact, overall the pain has steadily decreased every week since surgery, with the exception of a few days in week 3 wherein I began to get the disturbingly consistent sensation that that someone was pouring acid down my shin as the nerves began to regrow. But now, just beyond week 4, other than a random twinge or ache, my knee really only hurts when I am engaging it – trying to extend the leg or plant my heel when I walk, trying to extend or flex beyond my still limited range of motion, or doing something stupid that results in banging, bumping, or otherwise annoying the area.

The swelling hasn’t gone down at all in the last few weeks, partly, I suppose, because as my symptoms improve I am increasing my activity level. It’s not dramatic, but compared to the other knee, the swelling it is very obvious. "Oh, it's supposed to look like that one.", I frequently get from people when they see how thin my healthy knee is. Based on my previous thoughts on the two types of inflammation it’s pretty clear that I’m down to the more stable type of tissue swelling that will not be going away any time soon.

Range of motion has not increased by any significant measure and I have to admit that it is beginning to concern me. I am now a full two weeks behind any published recovery schedule I have found. On a really good day I can push through the pain and eventually force the knee down near or even at a full zero degree extension – still a far cry from my natural range which has nearly ten degrees of hyper-extension. Then again, it’s been pointed out to me that there is no functional advantage to achieving hyper-extension, so maybe zero will be enough. In flexion I can now get to 100 degrees, but I'm hopeful that with another day or two of consistent icing, pulling, and stretching, and a few R rated outbursts of profanity I will be able to achieve the additional ten degrees I need to spin bike cranks again. Getting there will be my goal for this weekend.

In general things are definitely getting “better”. Last week I spent a day at work, in the brace and on crutches for the most part, but by the end of the day there was little question that it was just too much too soon. The next day I was back down to about 30 degrees of total motion and I could barely stand. But this week I spent two consecutive days at work offsites, again in the brace and with the crutches, and I did much better. If nothing else, it feels good to be able to leave the house and be out like an ordinary, healthy person again.

Also contributing to my renewed sense of normalcy, I packed up the airbed a couple of weeks ago and I’m back to a more normal existence - sleeping in my own bed (although with a large flat pillow between my legs to keep my knees from banging into each other), showering standing up, working at a desk, and eating at the dinner table again. Small things individually, but in aggregate, they make up a large part of why I now feel like a healthy person recovering from an injury rather than a helpless immobile invalid. Although having the perception of health does not in itself make you healthy, I do believe that getting trapped in the perspective of pain and disability can definitely delay recovery.

As I go back and look through my earlier posts, I run across the bits of well-intentioned, Hallmark-ready recovery advice I had about staying strong and maintaining a positive outlook and continuing to focus on improvement. I’ve now come to realize that this advice is much easier to give than to follow. I’ve also realized recently that although I had previously seen plenty of people recovering from injury either on crutches, or in knee braces, or casts, or slings, or the like, I had always considered only the practical effects of the physical limitations they were faced with. No riding for twelve weeks, or no stairs for six months, no mosh pits for a year, or some similar consequence. Never, not once did it cross my mind that these people were almost certainly in the middle of a lengthy excursion into physical discomfort that at times was likely quite physically and emotionally demanding. The bottom line is that until you actually go through it there is no way to fully understand what it takes to remain diligently positive and strong throughout an extended period of even moderate pain and disability. Those who can do it, and I am not one of them, have an inner strength that the rest of us will never truly know.

Certainly, my knee injury is not catastrophic. But as I have said before, neither is it at all insignificant. It lies somewhere in the middle. And thankfully, I have a bit of a short memory for personal details. So when I look back on this a year from now, I will have only a vague recollection of how uncomfortable and difficult it really was. I will have gladly forgotten the true extent of the trauma. I may even have forgotten about the myth of the corner that was promised to me. What I will know by then is only that despite a few very long days, various confidence draining setbacks, and countless hours spent pleading with my knee to heal itself, eventually, I still made it through.