Pre Surgery Decision (May - August 2009)

So I am sad to say that I tore my ACL during a mixed netball game. I jumped up for the ball and got bumped in the air. I came down on my left leg while twisting clockwise. All the people around my heard a pop and I went straight down. It was by far the most excruciating pain I can remember.

It took about two weeks of waiting for an MRI appointment before I found out I had in fact torn my ACL. My initial injury was on 6 May 2009 and I first saw the orthopaedic surgeon on 2 June. He told me how the surgery worked with the hamstring graft and we booked in a date. I had a vacation planned for the whole month of July and I decided to have the surgery when I returned instead of trying to recover while overseas.

While on vacation I started thinking how it didn't make sense to me to injure my hamstring to fix my knee. I assumed there must be some sort of technology these days that can fix the ACL without having to use the hamstring graft. It just made sense that a recovery would be much easier that way. So, when I returned I called my surgeon and asked him about other options. He mentioned the LARS ligament. He told me about the history of the older generation artificial ligaments and said he prefers the hamstring method because it is tested. So far so good with the LARS but he doesn’t know what is going to happen in 10 years. However, he said he does them often, especially for people who need to get back to work quickly. He did say he doesn't agree with people using this method to jump back into sport quickly because he believes the knee still needs time to recover. He told me to do the research and tell him in a week if I wanted the LARS.

After doing a lot of research, it was clear to me that I wanted the LARS. I figured that getting back quicker would mean less muscle loss and prevent me from being too cautious in the future (lots of people even 5 years on that I know who have had the hamstring graft say they still think about their knee when they jump down stairs). I didn't mind the unknown because people have been getting this for about 5 years now and if something goes wrong I should get a few years warning for the smart minds to find a solution.

So, LARS it is and my surgery is booked for 10 August 2009.