Major Knee Injury : Help with my Sporting Future

[Dafydd]

Hey Guys,

This is a pretty comlplex one, and from what I uderstand of the nature of my injury, one for the experts! Around one year ago, (March 2007) I suffered a dislocated right knee playing rugby. This resulted in;

- Medial Collateral Tear
- Poster Cruciate Ligament Tear
- Anterior Cruciate Ligament Tear
- Fractured and "displaced" Tibial Plateau

This required surgery to repair the fracture and realign the leg with plates and pins, and to repair the medial collateral to give stability. The PCL has repaird itself, obviously the ACL can't do that, so I currently am without an ACL ligament. (N:B during the injury, it also seems I tore the hamstring (i think its the hamstring that connects at the back of the knee?))

So, pretty horrific all round, but I'm a very fast healer, one of the fastest the surgery / physio team have seen, and if I'm honest, I'm pretty determined / stubborn too. By the end of July I was walking without crutches (bearing in mind a 14week "in cast" period because of the break) and by September I was in the gym.

When I came back to University I hit the gym everyday and pushed myself through the knee pain barrier, spending most of my rehab using a stationary exercise bike for 60mins everyday and once I got a bit bolder building up my jogging capability from 3mins until the point where I was capable of jogging normally. By november 2007, I was discharged from the Physio and Doc.

Later in the year, mid-november I started playing "touch" rugby with friends (basically non-contact rugby) and coped perfectly fine and even had a few kick abouts in football.

Now, all this was quite some time ago, and I'm feeling pretty good about my knee, though I hve to admit it hurts from time to time, or if I twist this way or that, but a lot of it will probably to do with the fact I don't really train for "running" anymore. My capabilities are;

Jogging is totally fine.
Running is totally fine.
Sprinting is fine, BUT, I have an "odd gait" and don't actually manage to sprint, just run in a wider stride, I have no "heel flick" (i dont know this stuff, I have a sprinter friend)
Jumping isn't 100% comfortable, but I havent done any physio on the muscles which jump in the leg so that could possibly be rectified.

Recently I've began to miss sport, in a big way, and my attention has turned back to the possibility of taking up sports again. Now, I was told my only concern would be PTA (post traumatic Athritis?) but that hasnt surfaced and my knee feels strong. So here are the questions I desperately need answering;

Am I in a position to take up sport again in my current physical condition with the aide of knee brace?
If so, which sports?
Would "7's" rugby be possible?


Which brace?

If no, would an ACL recon make it possible?

(I'm sorry for so many questions, it has been a long time since I spoke to anyone about my injury and I'm really anxious to speak to experts about it)

Thank you so, so much.

Dafydd.

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