hey all

give u the background first. Last Monday nice 25knot day doing some kiteloops.. pushing the envelope a little bit looping lower and lower till well the kite didn't catch me. Took all the pressure in my right leg. Managed to dislocate my right knee, tore my mcl acl and damage my pcl. As well as send stress fractures up my femur and my tibia from when the bones hit each other.

Was obviously incredibly gutted thought that's more than just my season over usually for this level of trauma you are looking at a minimum of 6 to 12 months recovery and with the typical hamstring graft your knee will never be the same again.

now thanks to this wonderful artificial ligament called LARS they replaced my acl with it and i can expect to be on the water within 6 weeks.. just taking it easy then be back to a full functioning knee within 3 months never needing to wear a brace or anything.

So if your going in for a knee reconstruction ask your doctor about this LARS ist the quickest and strongest result you can get out of a knee recon.. its only fresh but ill let you know if the docs predictions are right and when i can comfortably ride again :) but for now im stocked

see you all out there real soon

ben

did u use the patella tendon or hamstring?

Hamstring.

PsYLoR said...

Just wondering, h20fly - did you warm up and stretch heaps before you went kiting or not at all?

Hope you recover well.

to be honest mate all the warm up and stretches in the world wouldnt have helped my knee in this case.. It was just simply a case of wrong angle and timing. ive not landed 100s of kiteloops bigger than the one i didnt land this time but this time i didnt just skip out and bum check instead my weight went forwarding making me knee take the full brunt of it.

Its funny i remember giving my legs a little wiggle and flex just before i hit the water like i knew i was going to damage it and thought i wasnt going to feel it normal for a long time lol

Take it easy on the road to recovery!!

I ripped my MCL off the bone and ruptured my PCL and had fractures top and bottom. No op as ACL ok. MCL and PCL ops do not have a good success rate. 4 months along I can kite but the knee feels weak and loose. You might not get that with them putting a new ACL in.

I went too early and reinjured the knee put me right back. Lesson learned.

Good luck, do the hard work in rehab and it will benefit you.

Ye good luck with the rehab. Get a good physio, one that understands what a Lars ligament is, ask them if they have had experience with acl recovery using the lars. cos Lars are new to OZ not many have. I went through quite a few till I found one that would go at the pace I wanted. If they are not familiar with the Lars ligament they will pace your recovery out over 1 year, but like me you will want this done within a couple of months.
Once you start kite surfing again, get a big tube of Voltaren, it will be your best friend.

who was that phsyio btw seems ur in wa as well

Crikey! 6 weeks - that is amazing.

Best of luck with the rehab.

Note: My ACL was completely severed.

I was out of hospital the next day, with ability to walk with crutches and get around applying most of my weight on that leg (braced of course). After the first week I could get approx 40deg movement unassisted while doing excercises. 2nd week started to walk with brace on and sometimes no crutches. Could bend unassisted a little further prob close to 70 deg. Now Im just heading into my 4th week and I can bend beyond 90deg with little pain.

I can now start to straighten and tense my withered quad and can do basic unweighted hamstring curls to 90deg only.

I didnt have that much pain like you guys have mentioned. I took one neurofen each day to help control the swelling and iced when I could.

I start physio this week.

Good luck with the Recos guys,had mine done 2 1/2 years ago and was kiting again after 6 months..
I found the mental part of the injury harder to get over then the physical part..
That sound of your knee popping is always in the back of your head and took along time to get over!!!

coxy31 said...

Good luck with the Recos guys,had mine done 2 1/2 years ago and was kiting again after 6 months..
I found the mental part of the injury harder to get over then the physical part..
That sound of your knee popping is always in the back of your head and took along time to get over!!!

yep.... You are forever haunted by it. Every loop every fast landing the knee injury is always in the back of your mind.

Was 2 years ago and I am still not 100% confident in that knee.

EW said...

Anyone had a recon done in Sydney NSW recently, can you recommend a surgeon? My specialist has literally told me to wear brace for 4 weeks and physio for another 4 weeks before looking at recon..... but I want to just have it done like tomorrow. How long did you have to wait before getting in for surgery??? (someone told me joint needs time for swelling to go down before should consider recon, does that sound right?)

Jun Nagamori in Sydney
Hayden Morris in Melb
Have not had a recon from either, but know them well and know patients of both. My knee is beyond a recon, and is probably an eventual replacement candidate, so just had consultations with them about the reality of life after a replacement.

EW said...

Anyone had a recon done in Sydney NSW recently, can you recommend a surgeon? My specialist has literally told me to wear brace for 4 weeks and physio for another 4 weeks before looking at recon..... but I want to just have it done like tomorrow. How long did you have to wait before getting in for surgery??? (someone told me joint needs time for swelling to go down before should consider recon, does that sound right?)

Leo pinczewski without a doubt!!!! If you cant get Leo see David Wood both consult at North Sydney Orthopaedics at Crows Nest...
When i went in for mine i had to wait a couple of weeks for the consultation and the surgery was the week after that,but i had done my knee a few months before hand so swelling wasn't an issue
Knees is what these guys do Leo has done 1000's of them

hey just an update on the lars. :) its been 11 days ive been off crutches for 3 days now... ive got probably about 70 degrees of flexion and almost full extension. not much pain at all. Its awsome im driving im getting about slowly getting my life back. cant wait for kitestock :)

But a genuine warning be very careful with oxycodon. I think i genuinely have a physical dependency on it. I literally cant sleep more than 2 hours with out it .. im always just feeling on edge. trying to slowly ween myself off by just taking half at night but still haven't been able to stop having that half for about 4 days now grr

rsc said...

Hi Ben

I heard the news the other day when I went in to pick up the new harness (which works really well for me).

Reading these comments makes this 'sport' sound like a disaster zone.

I'm only in it for the cruising and hope these type of injuries are limited to the specky tricks dept!

Anyway, thanks for your help and hope you get well soon.

Cheers
Russell

hey russel

(p.s. I'm making slow progress...)

hey russ! nice one mate! you will be fine.. just avoid kiteloops they are a knees worst enemy :) apart from that you should be fine.. see ya out on the water soon mate

Hi just thought I would add my two cents,

I was fortunate enough to watch a fair few knee operations (amongst others) at St. John of God (Murdoch) with a hip and knee expert orthopedic surgeon. I had quite a lengthy discussion with him about the different types of grafts and basically he said the hamstring graft was a much better graft long term and tends to avoid the LARS technique unless in the elite athlete population where quick recovery is vital.

The reasoning he gave me is that unlike the tendon harvested from your hamstrings (there are a few different places they can get it from btw) the artificial graft used in LARS is a lot stronger than the ACL is normally and in fact is actually stronger that the bone it is anchored to and as such creates and erosion type effect and apparently a lot of the footballers getting them done go get it redone with the hamstring after their career is done because of the increased rate of degeneration of the knee and deterioration of the graft. This is not to say that the LARS is a bad technique just that all the techniques have their pro's and con's. I am interested to hear about the technique using the existing ACL stump Niall, I would have thought that would be weaker than a hamstring/patellar autograph? Is there any data out there for the tensile strength of that technique?

It will be interesting to hear how it turns out long term, respecting the graft you have and being diligent with rehab and continuing to look after the knee years down the track will hopefully keep you out of having further problems.