Snowboarding knee injury recovery help

Hey everyone,

A month ago today I had a crash snowboarding and injured my knee. I was in deep soft snow and the nose of my board went under the snow causing me to flip/cartwheel over the nose and hit the snow face first. When I hit the snow the inertia of the board caused it to keep moving when I had stopped causing the board to hit me in the butt (fully bending my leg, with perhaps a bit of a twist). I heard an audible popping sound and instantly felt a lot of pain in my left knee.

I made my way the rest of the way down (not far) in a lot of discomfort. I was on vacation in Japan and I could walk with a limp, so I did not immediately see a Dr. I continued the rest of my vacation walking a lot, but not feeling much pain provided I walked a certain way and approached stairs gingerly. I did not see any improvement in my knee over this remaining 10 days of vacation. The biggest issue is that I could not fully straighten my leg, and any lateral motion or twisting caused sharp pain.

Since I've been back home, I've seen a Dr. that sent me for xrays which showed a normal knee (expected). After a short exam, I'm told I've likely torn my MCL, and possibly damaged my meniscus. I'm prescribed naproxen and physio.

I've since seen little improvement in my knee, I can feel my MCL getting stronger, at least I think it is as I can do body weight squats now and generally move around more freely without pain. I still cannot fully straighten my leg, it's just as bad as the days following the injury, and it makes walking and standing awkward. In physio he's been putting something under my ankle and letting gravity sort of pull it down, and this does seem to get me a little closer to straight for the appointment, but I seem to go right back afterwards, and my leg just generally doesn't feel useful if I try to fully extend it. It also causes me some pain during and afterwards when trying to improve my range of motion.

I have some very localized pain right at the widest point on the inside of my knee that seems to get worse when I stretch it out.

I'm hoping some one on this great forum can offer some more insight and ideas on how to get back to 100%, or perhaps just ease my mind that I'm currently on the right track. Snowboarding specifically, but just general mountain/outdoor life is a huge part of what brings me joy in life and it's been hard sitting back trying to recover, and even harder when I'm seeing little improvement over the last month, I'm scared I might not be the same again.

Thanks so much for reading and ahead of time for any replies.

Tycho