I tore my other ACL
- Rena Kawabata
- Aug 22, 2019
- 5 min read
Tomorrow I’m getting my second ACL surgery. It’s safe to say that this is not where I planned to be at the start of this season, and in fact something that I had promised myself I would never do again. A promised that I did everything in my power to keep.
On the Saturday of Colorado Cup (July 13th, 2019), I woke up feeling extremely prepared for the weekend and the first real test for Molly Brown this club season. I was excited to face some tough opponents, to compete and perform, and to spend some quality time with my new teammates and friends. For those who don’t know, I have been travelling to play with Molly Brown this season, still living in Seattle and commuting to practices in Colorado and tournaments across the US. I was feeling fast, strong, explosive - The best I’d felt since the World Games season in 2017. I think I played great all our first day (we faced Showdown, Heist and Nemesis), gelling with my O-line teammates and making adjustments as necessary, but overall providing what I was asked to do in my role: get open, throw downfield, generate offensive flow.
In our last game, and on one of the last points (I think it was 11-5 or something like that), I was cutting across the front of the endzone and my teammate, Nhi, throws quick shot up the gut of the vert stack to where I was poached. Another defender, not mine, sees me getting open and the throw going up and decided to lay out into my and in the opposite direction that I was running such that we collided as I was trying to catch the disc. She hits me directly in the knee on impact, and I feel it’s not right immediately.
I will get to why this was an incredibly dangerous play in another blog post. But for now, I reamed her out on the field, and explained later when she came to apologize why her play was incredibly dangerous and why she should never make that play again. Because my knee was now hurt, it wasn’t right, it didn’t feel good, and I was terrified that the worst had happened.
I didn’t play the next day, and while five different medical professionals said that my ACL was intact, it really didn’t feel right and it was not stable. I rehabbed it as if I had sprained my MCL, and two weeks later my chiro and PT cleared me to play. This is what I journaled my first practice back:
Saturday, July 27, 2019
I think I tore my other ACL today. I was striking deep for a huck and had to change my angle slightly and pushed in my right leg and it just buckled and gave way. I heard a pop and tumbled to the ground.
My knee felt something exploded inside of it. There was pain. So much that I didn’t want to hold my leg up even. I wanted someone to hold it for me. I said “Fuck fuck fuck,” to Ronnie, “It’s my ACL.” Joe came over and took over after that.
I don’t know why I didn’t cry. Perhaps I had already shed the tears when I thought I sprained my MCL two weeks ago. And that perhaps I knew I had asked for this when I was playing again so soon.
I didn’t know what to do. I was in my own head for about an hour after that. Feeling my knee, noticing every small thing that was different and changing. I called Kieran and talked to him right away. I liked that he gave me some tangible actions to do. That distracted me for a while.
I texted Mia to try to see an orthopedic surgeon in Denver. She got back to me quite quickly and I’m seeing her friend Rachel at CU on Monday or Tuesday. My knee felt full, clicking happens when I bend it slightly with weight on it, and there’s something that gets stuck inside my knee and is very painful when I try to bend it all the way. It clicks and it’s painful and uncomfortable and then I get full ROM again.
After that plan to see Rachel was made there was nothing left for me to do. So I was focused on practice and talked to my teammates on the sideline. I was able to refocus and give to my team after being focused on myself for the last 1.5hrs.
It started swelling after practice, after I had been on it for 2.5hrs and after I took off my knee sleeve. It’s 4pm now and been almost 6hrs since it happened at 10:30am. We sat at lunch for a while and now that the swelling has set in it’s hard to walk. I’m slow and it’s hard to bend it to navigate around things, sit down, stand up, get in and out of the car.
I saw Dr. Rachel Frank on the Tuesday after it happened. Her resident saw me first and did all the tests, then left without telling me the news that I knew she already knew. Rachel then came in and did the tests again and then asked me, “So what do you think is going on with you knee?” and I responded, “I think it’s my ACL.” She confirmed and said that there was also damage to my medial meniscus. I got an MRI that same day and got the results the next day triple confirming it was a full ACL tear and medial meniscus tear.
I told myself I would do everything in my power to prevent this from happening again, and I really, really did accomplish this. I have been so incredibly strong and stable these past four years. While there was always the fear that it could happen again, it became a distant thought, one that was easily managed through positive self-talk that I was doing everything I needed to in order to keep my body strong and stable. So strong in fact that a direct lateral impact to my knee didn’t even tear it.
When people have been asking me how I feel in the last week, I’ve said “neutral”. I think I’m over the intense all-possessing grief, but because everything has moved so fast in this American healthcare system, I haven’t really had the chance to process the physical trauma I will be experiencing in the coming weeks and the immense psychological and emotional mountain I will have to climb in my recovery. Of course, having gone through this already, I know that it’s there - the humbling, time-consuming, soul-sucking, mentally and emotionally draining mountain that is my recovery, which will likely take 9 months to complete physically and then years again to overcome emotionally.
But here I am… willing and ready to start the climb. For the second time.
Comments