SamACL

Hello, everyone. I'm going to try to keep this as short as possible, but will probably fail and please excuse my rants...
I have read lots of threads in this forum and all over the internet, but my English isn't that great so it's hard for me to understand a lot of what is being said, so I'm giving it a try by making my own thread.


In 12 days I am officially 7 months post-ACL reconstruction using the the patellar tendon . I have been doing PT all the time every since, about 2-3 times per week.

In my honest opinion, I feel like my progress has been decent, my muscles are recovering, although I still got a long way to get my left leg to get the same amount of size of muscles compared to the right. It looks really freakish and I'm doing everything to get it to my normal size...

However, there seems to be ONE problem stopping me from progressing. I haven't really done any good progress in 2-3 months now and I'm getting depressed again.

The problem is PAIN!!!!

No matter what, there is pain at both top and bottom end where my patellar graft sat before. There's also a worse pain on the right side of the top patellar graft position. It's preventing me from doing about everything. I can't even bend my knee slightly without having the sharp pain of a knife stabbing my knee.
I also suffer some pain that is most like some shinsplints, but it's not as bad as the above.

I managed to do 440 lbs on the leg press machine 15x3, which tells me that my strength is getting there, even though most of it came from my right leg, but it gave me a lot of pain days after and I haven't tried doing it again.

Today, after almost 1 year of no sports besides bodybuilding, I played my first soccer "match" in my gym class, lasted around 30 mins with 1 break. I felt like it was about time I started to do some real activity and I miss soccer so much and my PT said I should really give it a go...

To sum it up, it went just OK. I tried not to get in contact with people, and only pass and move with the ball.

However, hours after, I'm sitting here with so much pain in the knee everywhere. It feels like the knee is useless. I do understand that it's probably just iritated and swollen, but again, when it goes away, I still have so much pain preventing me from getting new progress...


This injury has almost ruiend my life as a then 18 year old and now 19. I wanted to play in top division soccer (played since I was 5 and I'm still really good), but my dreams were shattered. I then decided to get into the military soon, but I probably won't get it because my knee can't take it. I don't want a job in an office, I want a physical demanding job, because I am a sportsperson... without sports, I feel like nothing.

I am seriously having dreams every week ever since my injury about me playing soccer because it's a part of me, a part of me soul...

I'm thinking about it every day, when my knee can get back to normal so I can feel like myself. I haven't really felt like myself ever since April 2012 when I got tackeled... I just want to get back to the old me - play soccer and all other sports without worrying about landing wrong slightly wrong, without worrying about contact sports, without getting pain just because I press a weight, etc. I'm getting bored of bodybuilding.


I just don't know what to do anymore. I feel like my PT classes is a waste of time. All I do is warm up, do some exercises where he uses force against my knee and I push, then he puts on some electricity thing. That's it, ever since I started there in September.

Please help me what to do... I have all different thoughts popping up every day like I never should've done the surgery, I never should've used the patellar graft, etc. I also get even more depressed reading about people getting back to sports at 6 months for full and people not experiencing much pain after 2 months when this is what is hindering me from EVERYTHING.

I've told my PT it too, that the pain is what is hindering me, but he doesn't really say much... He just says it takes time, but if the progress goes the same way, I will have the same pain in another 6 months. I can just feel it...

I am starting to wonder if something went wrong in the surgery, but I had a recent MRI scan which showed nothing else than a small bakers cyst and some inflammation...


Here's a little list of some stuff I CAN'T do:

* Jump high on left leg
* Squat with weight
* Stand on one leg bending *gives me great pain*
* leg extensions

Wow, the post got longer than I thought and I think it got a bit messy.. but I'm really writing this from my heart.

I don't know if anyone wants to read my long post, but I really hope someone has some nice answers and advices and if anyone has questions, please ask them, I will answer as honest as I can. Also if I was unclear in some parts, please ask so I can make it clearer

Thank you very much for reading.