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Originally Posted by mal
I was playing basketball lastnight and came down funny on my left knee. my knee bent all crazy and i heard a loud popping sound. I hit the ground instantly and started crying. that was the worst pain ive ever felt in my life. i think i may have torn my ACL. Has anyone ever torn their ACL in a knee and ever returned to playing contact sports at full force again?
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I've had 2 ACL reconstructions and from what you described, it appears you may have torn it. I'd like to tell you that it'll all be fine, but its been quite a frustrating road for me. Having played college ball, basketball is my passion and has always been my main form of excercise. I first tore mine in 98 and it happened much the way you described your incident. I had it reconstructed using a graft from my patella tendon on the same knee. It took me about a year to rehab and that was with me not being real diligent with the rehab. It was frustrating trying to play ball again, I literally lost almost all my jump and speed.
About a year after the rehab, I re tore the acl on the same knee. At this point I gave up ball for four years as I just didn't want to go through the surgery again. I just made sure any excercise I did didn't involve lateral movement and I was fine. Last year the same knee buckled on me bad just doing some light excercise and I decided to get the acl reconstructed again. This time I got an allograft (acl from a cadaver) and the surgery went well and I was doing an aggressive rehab and moving along twice as fast as post surgery before. After 5 months I was playing light haf court bball and very happy with my knee strength. However, in Jan of this year after 7 months of rehab, I tried my first full court bball game and had 2 large pieces of cartlidge break off.
Its never been the same since, I had it scoped in April to remove the pieces, but its been painful all summer. It pisses me off to think that I may never be able to play ball again, but I'm close to coming to that resolution. If you did end up tearing your acl and you opt for surgery, try and have the allograft procedure done. They've made huge advancements in this surgery over the last decade and if you work at it you can recover 100% within six months. I'm assuming your knee is very swollen hard to walk on right now?