Hi everyone! I am 37 years old and located in Southern California, USA (just turned 37 October 21st). Before my injury I was pretty active with my home gym I built, after having started a workout program to lose weight, as well as changing my diet entirely.
After having read the quad tendon thread (all 81 pages) here (
http://www.kneeguru.co.uk/KNEEtalk/index.php?topic=33177.1200) I decided to create an account and tell my story. I guess probably my main question is if my timeline is normal, below what normally happens, or if I am ahead most others in my progress. It's hard for me to remember that it has only been 1 month and ten days since surgery, because I have never had anything like this and it is very frustrating at times. Especially for my poor mother. She's being such a trooper at taking care of me during this time but she is now doing everything I was doing for her before, along with taking care of the animals I took care of. Anyway...
The reason why I am starting this out talking about the year prior is it is kind of related. See, one of my side passions is bowling. Can't get enough of it. The year prior in October 2015 I had gotten really sick at the bowling alley - I got so dizzy with vertigo I was bedridden for around 2 days. That turned me off of bowling for awhile. My story begins almost a year later, on August 28th, 2016. I wanted to go bowling for the first time in about year, because I missed it and wanted to get back into it again.
So I get lane 13 (and think nothing of the significance of that number). On the 3rd frame of the first game, I injure myself in a way that will completely change my life. I am not an injury-prone person, and have generally been injury-free, so I have no experience with this kind of stuff. So anyway, back to the lane: I am on the 3rd frame of the first game. As I am sliding on my left foot, my left foot keeps going. My right attempts to stabilize and get myself standing, but it's not happening.
Gravity takes over and I fall flat on my back onto the hard wood, fully bending both knees but my right twists itself in a way that results in a "holy s**t WTF was that" and one of the most painful things I had felt in a long time. I refused to resign myself to the fact that I was injured and tried to get up again. SPLAT. I fell flat on my face. There is no support in my right knee. This is when I start to get extremely concerned. I am unable to walk for a good solid 5-10 mins afterwards. I end up crawling to the chairs and calling my stepdad. Thanks to the help of some fellow bowlers, I am able to get up into the chair. My stepdad is luckily able to bring crutches and I can finally walk.
We get to my stepdad's Ford F-150 without much issue. Except when I try to get into the truck. I fall twice until I am able to regain some sense of balance and get into the truck eventually. Here is where both of us think "yeah it's time to go to the emergency room to get it checked out." The emergency room thankfully is not a long trip and is really just 5 mins away around the corner.
At the emergency room, the primary diagnosis is "everything looks fine and nothing looks out of place". And I am sent home with some motrin. I am still unable to walk. At this point I can somewhat use my knee, I can't drive and I have to live my life in a recliner, with modified activity. I cannot work, except from home because I do websites for a living. I haven't been able to go to work since Friday August 26th.
I finally get an appointment with a doctor the following week. He wants to wait about two weeks for the swelling to go down so that we can assess the damage more accurately, even though I cannot fulfill his test of trying to get onto the doctor's bed using my right knee on a stool. After the two weeks, near September 14th, I am still on crutches and have absolutely no improvement in my condition. I still cannot fulfill his test. The next step he said was to have an MRI done and to see an orthopedic surgeon. He sends me to get an MRI on September 14th, so I can see an orthopedic surgeon on September 16th.
The news from the orthopedic surgeon on September 16th is shocking. I had completely torn my right leg's quadriceps tendon, and need surgery to correct it. I was scheduled for surgery immediately, on September 21st, 2016 (September 21st seems to be a popular date for this surgery, after reading the entire 81-page quad tendon thread). I went through surgery without much incident, save for the first several days recovering from the anesthesia where I had some slight nausea but nothing to write home about.
WARNING: THE FOLLOWING PICTURES ARE KIND OF GRUESOME. IF YOU HAVE A WEAK STOMACH I SUGGEST AVOIDING THEM.This is the picture of my surgery incision around September 30th:
http://i.imgur.com/WAe2CDE.jpgI finally had all of my surgery staples taken out on October 14th. On October 21st, about a week after having my surgery staples taken out, here is what my surgical incision looks like as of Oct. 21st:
http://i.imgur.com/wdB8Fmh.jpg. My surgeon was concerned that it is not healing quite as fast as he had hoped and wanted me to come in for an extra appointment on October 26th. Thankfully, it is now healing quite faster (this is my knee as of October 26th):
http://i.imgur.com/WsdLqnE.jpg. As of October 14th, I was able to start putting 50% weight on my right knee.
My surgeon's main concern was with the bleeding but it has stopped. He thinks that my knee is healing up from below and replacing the necrotic skin with new skin. Thankfully, that seems to have started, albeit kind of slowly. The scabbing / necrotic skin has started to flake off but not very fast, which seems to prove his hypothesis. On October 26th, I am finally able to start putting 100% weight on my right knee. I am, however, unable to bend or otherwise use my knee until the necrotic / scabbing area heals in full. So I still have to use crutches and keep my leg 100% straight until such time that the necrotic / scabbing area heals completely.
My next step is potentially plastic surgery if my wound continues to not heal, but I think we have to remember that it has only been around two weeks since I had my staples removed. I have been taking steps to help this heal faster. See, my main vice is food: I can't get enough of fast food. So I have been changing my diet to include many more vegetables and vitamins in order to help the healing process.
Whew. That is a lot of information and I hope I haven't bored anyone here to tears. I look forward to hearing from all of you.
