Ice and Ibuprofen

I didn’t sleep very well on that first night.

There wasn’t any pain, but my mind was turning. I got up in the night at least once to check the swelling.

When the morning finally broke, it came with some hope. I could barely see any swelling and I was still able to walk up and down stairs normally.

I remembered that I kept a diary during my previous recovery and spent some time going over the entries. The first few days had been hard – there was a lot of pain and I was walking on crutches for at least a week.

The swelling had been instant. My knee was hot and blew up like a grapefruit. This gave me some hope; it’s much different this time around and maybe I had gotten away with it.

That hope didn’t last long after googling and checking out the ACL subreddit. I learned that it can be different each time, and a partial ACL tear is usually as serious as a full rupture.

I got straight into the Ice and Ibuprofen routine and am using both every 4 hours. It will hopefully keep any swelling down but, at the very least, it will help to ease the pain.

This weekend I have two weddings to attend, one being my little sisters. I won’t let this get in the way of the celebrations – I will enjoy it, put this knee to one side, and make some memories.

I also know that I can’t really make the knee any worse. Any damage is already done and, providing i’m not running around, all I can do is make the swelling and pain a little worse.

In the afternoon, I called my health insurance and started the process. First up was a phone call assessment with a physio. They asked the usual about my medical history, and various questions:

Can you bend your knee normally?
Can you extend it fully?
How is the swelling?
Did you hear or feel a pop during the injury?
Can you walk? Up and down stairs?
Can you squat?
etc. etc.

It was a little bit helpful, but it’s just going through the motions. The only real way to know for sure is to get an MRI scan, and to do that I will need to jump through a couple more hoops.

After the phone call, I confirmed with my insurance and booked an in person physio appointment at JAM Physio for the following Tuesday morning.

I will have many positive things to say about Jamie Murphy and his practice in this journal. He rescued my recovery during my last ACL, and has incredible real world knowledge working with some of the worlds top footballers.

This whole thing comes at a bad time. I mean… it’s never a good time of course, but I have some plans from early October that could need changing.

I will talk about that more in the next few days. The immediate focus is getting that MRI scan and full diagnosis as soon as possible.

For now, it’s Ice and Ibuprofen.