BD64
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Like @WestCoast I also have experience from ACL surgeries. Make sure you ask the doctor what sort of issues you can expect to run into AFTER surgery and during recovery, as well as a timeline. There will likely be many unforeseen hindrances. As an example of post ACL surgery:
First few weeks: literally couldn't get myself out of bed and into the bathroom or to grab food from the fridge. Pain was excruciating even just moving my leg slightly (even on meds) and I had nowhere near the leg strength to actually stand up. Luckily I was at home and had my mom + brother to basically cater to my whim 24/7. 3am and I needed to piss? Time to shout across my house and wake up mom. If I hadn't anticipated this issue then I have no clue how I would have survived, would have had to dole out thounsands of $ (which I didn't have) to stay in the hospital for a month.
Following few months: Still lots of trouble. Gotta wear an extremely uncomfortable brace and use crutches for a while, while I could finally move on my own it still sucked to do so. So, I flew back to Colorado away from my family and back to college. But I hadn't anticipated how this would work... My house was a 45 min walk from my classes (when healthy). I couldn't cover that much distance in my current shape and I couldn't drive because hurt knee was on my right side. Oops.
So make sure you think ahead. What are the things you will need to do that may be impacted? Try to come up with all the scenarios and put solutions in place before you have your surgery.
Also, like @Red and @WestCoast said, pain meds. Be really, really careful with these things. My doctor tried to load me up on Vicodin... I decided that popping multiple of these EVERY DAY for WEEKS would be a rather bad decision. What I did instead was consult with a few pharmacists I knew and came up with alternative solutions like a combination of tylenol, advil and at times, marijuana. That ended up working just fine for me as I only took the harder stuff for a couple of days and when doing very difficult, early PT work. But most of the time I could get by with over-the-counters and some good homegrow (careful with that if you're not in Colorado/Cali/etc. though)
Fun fact: my profile pic. is the scene right before I ran into my buddy with a GoPro and tore said ACL. If you look carefully I only have 1 ski on. But it looks cool!
First few weeks: literally couldn't get myself out of bed and into the bathroom or to grab food from the fridge. Pain was excruciating even just moving my leg slightly (even on meds) and I had nowhere near the leg strength to actually stand up. Luckily I was at home and had my mom + brother to basically cater to my whim 24/7. 3am and I needed to piss? Time to shout across my house and wake up mom. If I hadn't anticipated this issue then I have no clue how I would have survived, would have had to dole out thounsands of $ (which I didn't have) to stay in the hospital for a month.
Following few months: Still lots of trouble. Gotta wear an extremely uncomfortable brace and use crutches for a while, while I could finally move on my own it still sucked to do so. So, I flew back to Colorado away from my family and back to college. But I hadn't anticipated how this would work... My house was a 45 min walk from my classes (when healthy). I couldn't cover that much distance in my current shape and I couldn't drive because hurt knee was on my right side. Oops.
So make sure you think ahead. What are the things you will need to do that may be impacted? Try to come up with all the scenarios and put solutions in place before you have your surgery.
Also, like @Red and @WestCoast said, pain meds. Be really, really careful with these things. My doctor tried to load me up on Vicodin... I decided that popping multiple of these EVERY DAY for WEEKS would be a rather bad decision. What I did instead was consult with a few pharmacists I knew and came up with alternative solutions like a combination of tylenol, advil and at times, marijuana. That ended up working just fine for me as I only took the harder stuff for a couple of days and when doing very difficult, early PT work. But most of the time I could get by with over-the-counters and some good homegrow (careful with that if you're not in Colorado/Cali/etc. though)
Fun fact: my profile pic. is the scene right before I ran into my buddy with a GoPro and tore said ACL. If you look carefully I only have 1 ski on. But it looks cool!
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