I Hate To Tell You This...

July 16, 2013

The pain caused me to wake up early. With a gut feeling and Richard’s “diagnosis” from the night before, I called a real Physical Therapist and friend of mine. He asked what my symptoms were and how the injury occurred. He said that it sounded like a ligament tear and told me to swing by his center so he could test it. I was there within the hour.

He was surprised that there was very little swelling and no bruising. After conducting a few manual tests he said that my knee seemed like it was in fairly good shape. He did notice a slight difference in the right knee but that was to be expected with athletes, he told me. Whew, I breathed a sigh of relief. Before I got up he told me that he wanted to conduct one more test and presented an old-school contraption that wraps around the leg and fastens to the tibia. It’s used to check for acl tears by pulling on it, which brings the tibia up. One can determine if there is a tear by how much ‘give’ the tibia has. His diagnosis: “Your acl is torn, my dear.” He gave me the number of an orthopedic surgeon who works with the Phoenix Suns.

Crap. I didn’t know what that meant. Nothing that couldn’t be fixed with a little time and PT, right? I posted on facebook, “Torn ACL. No insurance. Awesome.” The comments started pouring in and I realized it was a little more serious than I initially thought.

About an hour later, I was at my doctor’s office for a second opinion. She also conducted a few manual tests and thought my knee was in decent shape. At any rate, she prescribed an MRI. I went to the diagnostic center right away. After the MRI, they gave me the film and a CD and told me that my doctor would receive my results within 24-hours. I returned home and decided to play Doctor myself. After comparing my film to pictures I found on Sensei Google, I was pretty confident that it was an acl tear.

My phone rang just after 2pm. “Tiffany, I got your results early.” “OK,” I said, and took a breath. “I hate to tell you this…”

It was worse than I thought. My facebook post read: ‘It just gets better. Torn ACL. Bone contusion. PLC sprain. Tear in PL joint capsule. Partial separation of lateral meniscus. Sprain of superior fasciculus. Knee joint effusion. Ruptured popliteal cyst. Fun times.’ More comments and get well wishes.

How could this happen? What about my training? What am I going to do if I can’t go back to martial arts? I don’t want surgery. What if I HAVE to get surgery? What if my knee will never be the same again? I’m so pissed! How long will I be out? Why did this happen to me?? Arrrrgh!!

 

The depression set in and Richard came home to spend the rest of the day with me.