If you're a fan of Human Weapon on the History channel, they just aired an episode exploring the origins of Tae Kwon Do. At the end of the episode hosts Bill Duff and Jason Chambers are matched up with one of South Korea's best TKD instructors.
Bill gets knocked out during his second round, even being the large man he is with full protective gear on.
Jason tears his right knee's ACL with about 20 seconds left in his round. He attempts to execute a tornado kick with a poor landing, and the resulting torsion snaps his knee. He also lets loose an impressive stream of expletives that were beeped out.
He attempts to finish the round, but the pain and expletives just increase dramatically. I wanted to reach through the screen and smack him.
Macho...foolish...idiot.
I also had a conversation with a co-worker yesterday, and discovered she too is having reconstruction in about 3 weeks. She believes her "event" was likely about 10 years ago. Ten times she has endured episodes of excruciating pain as her knee joint locked up in flexion, apparently dislocating and requiring an ER visit to anesthetize the joint and pop it back into place. She's finally decided to get it diagnosed, and to have reconstruction.
I'm so glad this has been no more than a 4-week period from injury to surgery.
I can't imagine living longer than this with a sloppy, floppy knee joint, constantly concerned for whether my knee will pull a "flamingo" and bend backwards.
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6 comments:
I was three weeks injury to surgery. In my mind, the sooner I had the surgery the sooner I was on the road to recovery. The only downside was that I still had swelling and reduced range of motion from my initial injury. I was only able to get a few sessions of pre-hab in before the surgery.
Hopefully all your swelling and ROM will be back before surgery if it's not already there. These days leading up to it, do lots of leg lifts and icing. I did a month of PT before surgery and had no swelling going in and full range of motion. This surgery is so rough on the leg muscles so the stronger you can go in, the better.
I have to watch that episode. I can't believe he tore his ACL and kept going. I tried for a second after tearing mine and realized it was completely futile.
Hack,
BBM has posted some great pointers for you on her website. I'd like to offer one more that's specific to males, and a bit indelicate.
You will feel like you have to pee a lot in the first few days. I don't know if that's because your body's busy getting rid of extra fluids from the surgery, or whether it's just so hard to get up to go to the bathroom that each occasion is memorable.
A large glass jar next to your bed can be a life saver, especially if you wake up in the middle of the night, needing to pee but also in so much pain you don't want to move more than you have to. Keep a lid handy for when you're done.
I know this may fall into the TMI category, but things like this will make a big difference for your comfort in the first few days....
Bobspar/Hackshaft: That is so not fair. I am coming back in my next life as a man. My "equipment" sucks for ACL surgery.
I wanted to come back and ask when you saw that episode? I Tivo that show and it didn't record any new episodes. I've never seen the TKD one. When did it air?
The Human Weapon Taekwondo episode aired on Thursday, December 27th at Noon and 6PM.
I also TiVo the show, but the TiVo database didn't show this one as an upcoming broadcast! I happened to catch the problem and recorded it manually by time and channel.
Relevant clip is posted now.
Thanks for posting the video, I hadn't seen this on TV.
Speaking of "macho... foolish... idiot," I did the same thing at my black belt test after tearing my ACL: I tried to continue. I did okay grappling from a kneeling position, because I pulled the black belt into my guard and my knee was okay there. But when the next match began, I tried to start standing up, I put pressure on my knee, and down I went. End of black belt test.
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