A new pain showed up on day 8 and it is in my ankle.  I was just doing some tiny exercises with my ankle off the floor and it locked up on me. Now the swelling is light but enough that I have more pain in my ankle than my surgically repaired knee.  I can tell you that trying to straighten out my knee is next to impossible and I have lost ground in that area.  On the flexion part I have maxed out the machine at 120 degrees.  The only time it even comes close to discomfort is when I have more swelling in my knee.

I have not started physical therapy yet, although I am doing a lot of range of motion exercises at home.  I see the doctor on Wed. for the 10 day check up and get my stitches out.  Then he will send me to PT (physical therapy) and I was told that will begin on Friday.  I don’t think much will happen except more range of motion and maybe some electrical stimulation.

I will try to update the pages here on the blog weekly unless something happens that might help you down the line.

I have said this once and will say it again, because the search engines are all about authority these pages might never be read.  If you know of anyone who is having knee surgery send them this way so they have an idea of what to expect.  I can tell you I searched like crazy to find information on the net.  I found a few, but nothing since the surgery because I am to busy trying to get my knee back into shape.

Alright, talk to you soon.

Sleeping After ACL Surgery Is….

It doesn’t matter which way I laydown or what position my leg is in, I just cannot sleep through the night.  Even if I find the most comfortable position at some point my knee starts hurting.  I then need to head to the bathroom, do my thing and then return to find another position that will allow my knee to relax without pain.  However, after being up for a bit the blood starts heading down towards my ankle and that also hurts.

I have decided that I feel most secure in the machine (continuous motion machine) so I am gonna sleep on the floor and hope that I can make it through the night.   Also, now that I am up and about more, my rear end is not so darn sore.  The sofa also likes it when it can get back into shape after I get off it.  I believe I have gained 10 pounds this week alone.  We will see, but I am conscious of the fact that I am taking in a lot of calories and not putting out much, so I have cut back on my eating.

Pain Medicine and ACL Surgery

Another thing that I have been very conscious about is the pain meds.  I really don’t like taking pills and I don’t want to get into that habit.  The first 2 days after acl surgery I did take the required amount at the required time.  However, starting on Sunday I cut way back because I didn’t need them but the fall on Saturday kept my pain levels at around 5 or 6.  Towards the evening my pain really subsided so I never took any for the evening.  On Monday I feel twice and when we finally arrived at the clinic I had to take two.  Since that time I have only needed Advil twice.

My wife thinks I am stubborn but if you don’t have pain why take them?  All I know is that I can only take it one day at a time and remember where I was at the beginning of the week and then evaluate my progress.  If I don’t personally do it this way I will drive myself nuts thinking I can start walking normal within a week or two.  OK, enough of this day and my acl surgery.

Today I woke up really late like around 9 am which is unusual for me.  However, I did manage to stay away from all pain meds and that makes me happy.  My goal today was to get on the CM machine three times for a total of 3.5 hours.  I was able to accomplish that but I have got to tell you that my butt is getting really sore.  I am not used to sitting around and it’s killing me.

My acl surgery and recovery has been pretty good to day and the today I am going to do some exercises to help strengthen the quads as much as possible.  My other goal is to walk around the house (ice outside) and place my foot on the floor to help it learn how to step again. My knee feels pretty good but that pain in the tibia is still there to remind me to slow down.

Nutshell:

• Walking went fine might have overdone it because my knee joint was sore tonight.
• Range of Motion going past 100 degrees no problem, getting under 18 degrees big time problem
• strengthening exercises as long as my knee is locked in a certain position no problems, but if it moves the pain is to great

My ACL Exercise are not really exercises but rather range of motion exercises.  They mainly consist of sitting on the floor and bending my knee in flexion and extension exercises.  The hardest part is extension because the pain is severe in my tibia.  I did manage two sets of leg lifts that really helped my quads and really drained their power.

Well enough of today, it is now back to the machines (continuous leg flexion and extension).  I am now past 105 degrees in flexion and had to back off extension from 16 to 20 degrees because the pain is to severe.  Heck once I feel pain I stop the machine and make it go the other direction.  As it moves towards flexion I adjust the machine so it will not go past 20 degrees extension.

OK, tomorrow we make a trip to my brothers to help him with the loss of his home.  Fire

Ligament Reconstrution Hurts

I spent at least 4 hours on my feet today and whenever I stopped moving all the blood would rush to my calves and ankles and it caused a great deal of pressure which was very uncomfortable.   We left my brothers house and I spent the next hour doing some of my own physical therapy inside Winco.  If you don’t know what Winco is just think of it as a Big Walmart store that only carries food.  There prices are right and you have to bag your own groceries.

Ok, my physical therapy included trying to walk on my reconstructed knee as best I can.  I started walking on my toes because I cannot extend my knee completely because it hurts.  The pain is pin point directly on top of my tibia towards the medial side.   It’s basically right beside the patelar tendon.  Anyhow I managed to walk the whole store with my wife and eventually walked on my entire foot.  However, I could not walk with my leg straight and by the end of our shopping experience my ribs hurt from the crutches hitting them all that time.

I would say about the last 15 minutes I was able to walk completely on my injured knee without support.  No, I didn’t throw the crutches away but I would move them to the side so they would not touch the floor.

While my wife paid and bagged the groceries I found a place to sit and place my entire leg on the bench.  I would then allow my leg to straighten to the point of pain and then I would back off a bit and hold it there.  I did my leg lift exercises until fatique and then rested before walking out to the car.  By the time I sat in the car I was tired or should I say my leg.  We broke some ice for the trip and I used it once we started driving home.

Ligament Reconstruction Needs Rest and Ice

When we returned home I did not place ice on the knee, instead I used heat to try and soften the blood or swelling around my knee so it could drain towards my hips instead of my ankles.  After 30 minutes of heat I used ice for another 30 minutes.  Remember I use the polar machine that is starting to die on us.  Tomorrow morning we will need to meet our contact to get a new ice machine.

My wife had to go to school to take care of grades so I was stuck at home with 3 dogs that live inside the home.  They are constantly running out and in so I can to be a door handler.  Thankfully they only went out once and when I went to the door to let them back in I walked on my leg with crutches under my arm pits but out of the way.  I am gaining confidence now in the leg and by walking again or should I say placing the weight of my body on that leg it has really helped.  In another 5 days I will visit the doctor and get my stitches out.  Then he will give me my physical therapy papers so I can get started with the real professionals.

That’s it for now, talk at you tomorrow.

As I left our home the stairs were slippery and you guessed it, I slipped again and caught myself with the surgically repaired knee.  Yes, it hurt but I decided to hold off on taking pain med’s and as I walked into the clinic they have these really cool looking tiles on the floor?????

I slipped on the tiles and boy did that send shock waves through my knee.  While wating for the doctor I ended up taking my pain meds which helped me relax.

I finally was able to get into a room and my doctor’s PA saw me and told me there was no infection and the soreness in my tibia is because that is where he drilled out the bone to insert my new ligament.  He couldn’t believe how much I was able to bend my knee and he quickly left and had the doctor in my office.

After showing me the diagram of how he grafted my knee, he left and the next thing I know I am talking to the physical therapist.  The doctor wanted me to start working on strengthening exercises but when I went to their offices, he had me working on a bike, hooked me up to some sort of stimulus machine and handed me some exercises to do.  It all seemed weird because they were setting me up for 3 more appointments that week.

Well, it was straightened out and I am not supposed to start therapy until after my stitches are out.  However, I do not want to drive an hour for therapy when I only have to drive 5 minutes for therapy at our local place.

We went home and I was told to start using warm compresses to help get rid of the swelling.

Hot Cold Therapy

Basically I am now using more heat and elevation to get rid of the swelling.  I know if I can get rid of the swelling my range of motion will be greater on the machine.  I did work on the machine today and was able to bend my knee past 100 degrees and straightening it out I made it down to 16 and then the pain hit.  The pain I am experiencing is the anchor in my tibia and it is awful.  It hurts, I am now scared to even come close to straightening my knee to that point and it will be the hardest obstacle to overcome.

After working out I am now heating it for 10 minutes elevated and then using ice for the remainder of the day/night.

Also, while in the doctors office I noticed that I could lay on my side without pain so I tried to sleep on the sofa doing that.  Well, about an hour into my sleep I was screaming because I moved my knee and that pain in my tibia came upon me in great force.  I guess I will have to sleep on my back in the recliner instead.

All things thrown out the window

Like I said, it was a big day for me to work on the CPM and continue using cold therapy but it is not going to happen because I might have an infection in my stitches.  Yesterday, I needed to get out of the house and do something.  I went outside to watch the animals being fed and decided to move a bag of chicken food for my wife.  As I walked away, my crutch hit a piece of ice and it slipped out from under me.  Instincts took over and I had to use my surgically repaired leg to stop my fall.  As you can imagine my knee went nuts and the pain started hard, fast and didn’t stop.

The pain in my knee or should I say the top of my tibia was out of this world and something I faintly remember from the time when I got my hand stuck in a table saw.  The pain is enormous and breathing on it, sends me into a tizzy.

We did call the hospital and I had two options:

1. visit the emergency room
2. wait till Monday and go the the clinic

I have decided on option 2 because I want to see my orthopedic doctor instead of a ER doc.  It only makes sense to talk to the guy that put me into this situation. Right?

What we decided to do is take all the dressings off and visually examine the stitch site.  I have 4 locations on the front of my knee (ya, I know it should be 3) and the big one behind my knee on the hamstring.  That one hurts but as long as I don’t make sudden movements it remains calm.

By removing all the dressing (with was about 2 inches thick) I was able to get the cold pads much closer to the stitches.  The combination of that and pain med’s it has remained relatively calm.  If it wasn’t for this one location the pain management of this reconstruction would be almost nil.  Other than the one spot I do not feel pain in my knee unless I make a sudden movement and the stitches stretch out.

Tomorrow I will see the doctor and will give you a new update.

My hope is that we get a lot of people contributing to the comments below and that you will like and tweet these pages so everyone can learn from our successes and failures.  Also, make sure and talk to as many people in your area as you can.  They will give you great ideas on who is the better surgeon and make sure the people you talk to had anterior cruciate ligament injuries and had surgery to repair it.

Top 3 Sports Prone To Female ACL Injuries

The anterior cruciate ligament (ACL Injury) is a major pain in the butt if you are an active person.  Unfortunately female athletes injure their ACL more frequently than males.  The big 3 sports that are harsh on female atheletes and their ACL are: soccer, basketball and volleyball. My doctor told me yesterday before my surgery that he will be doing 3 acl’s and I am the only male in the group.  So, what I will be writting about is a daily recape of post operation strategies.

I will be adding pictures as my wife learns how to use our camera but here are the things I decided to do, before my surgery.

Pre Op Preparation for ACL Surgery

I hurt my knee when I was 13 years old (1973 to be exact).  Today, January 21, 2012  I am 52 years old and finally getting it repaired. Back in those days they didn’t operate on children and instead stuck us in a straight leg cast and called it a day.  You can probably imagine what my knee muscles looked like, right?  The muscle I am talking about is the vastus lateralus.   Sorry if I don’t spell the names correct, it’s been 30 years since I studied the human body.  This would have never happened had I not slipped coming down a steep hill that I climb daily.  However, after 3 months of climbing the hill my knee hurt so bad I had to go see a doctor.  From there I was referred to a orthopedic surgeon and he operated on my meniscus (cartilage repair) on December 2nd.  While he was in there cleaning it up, he noticed that my acl was a thread and told me he could tighten up my knee and hopefully keep arthritis out of there.  So, we decided January would be a good time to do a ligament reconstruction.   I can tell you that the Meniscus knee surgery was a very painless process and the only thing that hurt were my stitches.  This ACL surgery……………..ha, ha

My research on the net concerning ACL surgery recovery, post op, pre op and anything else lead me to several sites that helped me formulate a nutritional plan, physical therapy routine and anything else I could find.  The best help I received was from our school nurse who has a son that had his ACL repaired twice.  From his second operation I learned something that everyone should do.  I will explain it in a few minutes.

NUTRITION

I had always believed you can heal yourself from the inside out.  That means eat the right nutrients, vitamins, macro and micro minerals and you are good to go.  The list I have below is based on the fact that nutritional supplements are not cheap so I went to the source that I have used for many years.  I don’t want to try and sell you on this stuff and I will not, ask me and I will tell you, but anyone can purchase these supplements anywhere online or offline.

1.  multi-vitamin, mineral combination  (liquid vitamins is what we call it and it’s awesome)
2. Flexio Plus (glucosamine, condroitin, MSM, Zinc, Vitamin C and K1
3. Vital-C  loaded with vitamin C, zinc, cassis, quercetin, proligna pinecone extract
4. anti inflammatory can from the above list and my anti- nausua medicine
5. fish oil
6. Provailen for joint inflammation (new product on market)

Remember you can do more or you can do less.  I do have a lady that gave me a great deal of literature and she also advocates Brewers Yeast.  I forgot to get it and now, I and stuck with what I have here and it is working so, that’s that.  Realize I am typing this 36 hours after surgery.  Yesterday was a great day as far as pain is concerned but today, reality hit me.

Knee Joint Strength

Most or typical injuries to the ACL happen during practice or a game.  That means your legs are pretty strong and recovery should go rather “by the book”.  In my case, I am behind the 8 ball because it is so weak, that walking on stairs is a killer.  I am very unusual because most people have their knee repaired as soon as the swelling goes down.  For me, it was a 40 year wait and I did climb the hill several times before my surgery but my hip starting hurting so I had to use the treadmill to exercise.  Basically the stronger your knee pre op the faster you can recover after knee surgery.

Most Important Pain Reduction Strategy for Knee Surgeries

The nurse at our school has a son who played basketball at a D1 school and during a practice he blew out his acl.  He had surgery and lost 20 pounds because the pain med’s made him sick and he couldn’t keep anything down.  He had a second surgery last year and they gave him a nerve block that lasted two days.  The nerve block he received was through a cathiter that was left in his leg for 48 hours. I asked for one and the hospital I went to would only give me an injection that lasted 24 hours.  ACL surgery pain is a given but boy with those nerve blocks it is way more manageable.  Follow this link to learn more about a nerve block.  They had me drugged up when they gave me the nerve block injection and they also used ultrasound to help them locate the nerve.  I don’t remember anything else after that until I woke up from surgery.

Right now I am typing on 2 oxy’s and my knee is still aching.  On the scale of 1 to 10 I have hit some solid 8′s today, but the oxy’s if taken 2 at a time will quickly reduce that down to a 3 or 4.  My problem is that I can’t find a comfortable My nurse

My ACL Surgery January 20th 2012

ACL surgery is not a fun process but the tools they use today are way different than they were 30 years ago.  Arthroscopy is the new way to repair your ACL and it is less trauma to your knee joint.  The methods they used in the early 80′s (and I witnessed several of them through our college sports medicine department) started with two long cuts on the lateral and medial side of your knee. At least 6 inches long and then they used muscle rakes to move the muscles so they can drill holes in your femur and tibia.  Arthroscopy only has 3 holes (two below your knee and one above).  Usually people who have a torn acl will also have cartilage damage.  Repairing cartilage is a simple and painless process.  I never used one pain pill they gave me and I am a big time weinee when it comes to pain.

Right now (8pm Jan. 21)  I am typing this webpage 36 hours after surgery.  ACL surgeries are a pretty simple process these days and I was told the surgery lasted 90 minutes.  That is enough time for the doctor to drill his holes, take a piece of my hamstring and create a new ACL.  We discussed using a cadaver but he felt that for me it is best to use a live human tissue which was my hamstring.  (trust me my stitches hurt just as much as the bone but if I don’t move then they don’t hurt so bad).  My Doc was very confident using the hamstring because his results show that after 2 years the cells mend quickly and allograft themselves into the bones.  If I was not so active he would have opted for the cadaver graft.

ICE ICE and more ICE

Ice is my life savor.  I have a ice cuff hooked up and I have these two hug pads that my principal used last year for her knee replacement surgery.  Both of them are on my knee 24×7.  The ice cuff is worthless in my book because it is sitting on top of all the bandages and cannot produce enough “cool” to do any good.  However, this hug ice pads (the liquid stuff) are rotated every hour because that is how long it takes to re-freeze.  I am ready to start using ice bags again, because they will get the job done.  Swelling has been my biggest issue and even with elevating my leg the blood pools around my knee instead of coming back up my leg.

Rehab Has Started

I was given a leg machine right before surgery and was told to be in it for 4 hours a day.  Stupid me never used it while the nerve block was still working and now I am using it with the oxy’s instead.  The biggest pain I have is the incision behind my knee.  He took the graft from the middle of my hamstring about 2 inches above my knee joint.  At least that is where he started his cut.

0 to 90 degrees

The machine is really a cool devise that will move as fast as you want it to move or slower for those who have stitches to worry about.  When I first started I didn’t try to go a full 90 degrees, instead I started at 40 degrees and changed it 10 degrees every 7 or 8 minutes. I made it up to 80 degrees before the stitches started biting me.  Plus I forgot to take off the ice pads which created a lot of pressure on my knee.

OK, I am going to end this right now and I will be back tomorrow.  Since nobody will probaby read this for several months I will have time to upload pictures before you read this.  Let’s hope a google search will find this and you can enjoy it.  Don’t forget to like it, tweet it and google it.  The more we get the more people will find this and we can have an active discussion board.

Talk to you soon and stay positive during your acl surgery and recovery.

Bob

Well, we did live the good life of network marketing. Success was all around us and we loved working with folks.  I lost my desire when I went to my last board meeting with a certain company but what really got me was John.

John was a relatively new to our organization and he had a bad sponsor. I ended up working with him closely and together we got his income moving upwards really fast.  However, he had a gal in his downline that decided to move on to affiliate marketing and he soon followed.  Little did I know he was pumping out $5,000 paydays using clickbank.  Well, as time progressed he spilled the beans on how he went on to earn over $100,000 that year.

Truthfully, I have been wanting to create an eBook but someone beat me to it and he does a really good job explaining it, so why fight him.  This is not a part of network marketing success, rather it’s all about working with a site, with complete training that even I could follow.  ADRecipe not only helped me create some quick income it also taught me how to set up a blog. I have been using basic html sites all along and now life is way easier.

What I did was combine adsense and affiliate marketing to start earning $1000 per month in about 6 months.  I had a learning curve to navigate but it worked.  This summer I didn’t do a thing to my online business (3 months) and it still worked it’s way up to $1200 and that is not counting affiliate sales, that is strictly from adsense.

Now, what stops me from getting to the upper levels is time.  I have now started to outsource my material creation so hopefully that will double in the next two months.

If you are tired of spending money hand over fists, then take a step back, keep your money (except about $25) and start learning these word press sites they are fun and exciting.

I can truly say that I do not miss network marketing one bit.  I still receive commission checks and yes they are not even close to what I was making but I honestly have found excitement again in life. No more worrying about what downline members are going to jump ship, who is cross sponsoring, not having to call the company to get someone out of trouble for poor marketing skills, etc.

I do miss the friendships that were built along the way but we do run into each other from time to time.  Truthfully I still earn from network marketing by joining an affiliate program that helps me earn $200+ per month on auto pilot by using the techniques learned from above and using them towards this affiliate site.

Trust me there is a learning curve, but I am working with people one on one currently who are making remarkable progress.  So can you, if you want that type of hand holding.

out why, until I stumbled across one of their websites

These guys/gals are making 5 figures a month and they don’t recruit, sponsor, train or any of that mlm non-sense.

Hi, my name is Bob Alter and I have been a mlm consultant since 1998 but I quickly had to decide whether to keep losing downline members or join them.

My good friend and downline member John the programmer, called me up and said, “please don’t get mad at us, we never intended to hurt you but ever since Rebecca shared her results with us, we couldn’t possibly talk to another person about mlm again.

I asked John, what RESULTS!

He said,

Bob, I’ll give you 10,000 results and the first 9,999 don’t count.

She’s making a killing off of……………..

Fill out the form below, check your email to confirm your request and I will send you free of charge the information, they are making a killing off of

 This is a double opt in system, which means the link that you are looking will arrive in your email inbox after you verify your desire to receive the information we have prepared for you.  It will take an act from God to give your information to anyone.  We hate people sending us junk and you probably do to.  Your information is jealously guarded.