student sample essay
ACL Injuries
It was Valentine’s Day in 2003; I was playing basketball with my high school team. Part way through the game, I was running down the court for a breakaway. I then quickly pivoted to the right to go around my defender when I heard this loud pop in my knee and all of a sudden I went down to the ground in agony. As I fell to the floor, my scream was so loud and high pitched that it sounded as if I was being murdered. It was nearly thirty minutes before I could stop crying. This was a very traumatic moment in my life. The pain shot through my whole body as if I had been thrown into a lake with water below freezing. I’m sure the fans were astonished by how quickly it had all happened. The next thing I knew I was being carried off the court. At the emergency room, I found out that I had torn my ACL.
There are four major ligaments in your knee. The anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) is the most common ligament tear. This ligament is located right in the middle of the knee. It connects the thigh bone to the shinbone. The role of the ACL is to prevent forward movement of the tibia to the femur, and control rotational movement. Rupturing your ACL is a big thing. It is usually accompanied by a loud “bang” and collapsing of the joint. The reason someone tears their ACL is by sudden stops and quick turns on their knee that are not natural to the bodies’ normal movements.
After learning that you have a torn ACL, there are choices regarding treatment. After diagnosing the injury, the doctor will send you to see a specialist (knee surgeon). The knee surgeon will look over the x-rays that were taken when you were at the emergency room. He will decide if the tear is slight or severe and present you with some treatment options.
One option is conservative treatment. This would be appropriate for patients with a slight tear that do not necessarily need surgery. The doctor would give you a list of places for physical therapy that he thinks would be good for you and that your insurance will cover. Along with therapy, the doctor will prescribe pain killers and anti-inflammatory medicine to help you to cope with some of the pain and swelling. Depending on the severity of the tear, the doctor will either order you a specially designed knee brace for your knee or tell you that it would be wise for you to get one from the drug store because the tear is just partial, so you don’t need to spend all that extra money.
The other option is surgical. This is usually for a patient who has torn their ACL completely or almost all the way. Their doctor would set up an appointment time and explain to the patient what is going to happen during surgery. The whole surgery can be preformed in three hours. A week after surgery the doctor will want you to be in physical therapy. Depending on the doctor’s orders for therapy, you will know how long you will be on crutches. Along with therapy they will also prescribe pain killers and anti inflammatory medicine to help with the swelling. During physical therapy, your therapist will fit you for a knee brace, which will help support your knee while not in therapy so that you don’t injure your ACL again. After rehab your knee should be good as new.
I chose to have surgery because I had torn my ACL completely. ACL reconstructive surgery was probably the most painful thing I had ever experienced other than the original injury. I ended up staying in the hospital overnight as I was so drugged up that I had a hard time regaining consciousness. When I finally did come to and all the medicine wore off, I wished I hadn’t awakened at all because the pain was so bad. Once I did, though, they gave me pictures of what my knee looked like before and after the surgery.
I hated the first few weeks at home. I couldn’t dress myself and I wasn’t allowed to shower. All I could do was have a sponge bath and let me tell you, I started to smell funny. A week after surgery I had to go back to the doctor for my follow-up appointment. The doctor then suggested to me that it would be in my best interest to start physical therapy.
I was in therapy for almost six months, but it seemed like forever. It was definitely an experience I will never forget. I had to do the first part of rehab in the pool because I couldn’t even hold myself up. I had to learn all over again how to walk. I would get so frustrated because I couldn’t put my heel down first. I could spend thirty minutes to an hour doing the same exercise because I couldn’t do it right. The hardest day of rehab was when I got the pedal to go all the way around the bike. I almost cried because it felt so funny. The worst moments of therapy though were when they asked me to flex my quad. I couldn’t do it at all. They would put these little pads on my leg around my quad and then they would hook my leg up to a machine that would help contract the muscle. It was very painful. It felt like needles were stabbing me during those fifteen minutes of forty-second intervals every visit. I also didn’t like when they tried to straighten my knee. They would just keep going even when I begged them to stop. They weren’t trying to hurt me, but it sure seemed like they were. After my six months of rehab, I had finally gotten to the point of regaining all my strength.
During this whole process I found myself wondering whether I had gotten that ACL tear because I am a woman. I couldn’t help wondering whether I might have been spared this torture if I were a man. Actually it is true that more women are suffer ACL injuries than men. In fact, women between the ages of 15 and 25 are especially prone to this type of injury. Recent studies show that most female athletes playing soccer and basketball are six to nine times more likely to tear their ACL than males. Partly this is because when women exercise they rely mainly on their quads. If more emphasis was placed on the hamstrings then there wouldn’t be so much of a pull in one direction. Also a women’s biomechanical structure is different from a man’s. Male and female bodies are designed for different types of movement, and in playing sports there are movements that simply do not come naturally to our body. Training in those different areas would help to prevent the injury. Research has shown that specific stretching, strengthening, flexibility, and balance exercises can significantly reduce injury rates. Coaches of women’s sports should take this into consideration and help them train for these different types of movement so their players will be less susceptible to this injury.
After having the surgery and weighing out my options, I believe that surgery was the best thing for someone with an ACL injury as severe as mine. Trust me, it had its ups and downs, and there were times I wished I hadn’t done it at all. It was very discouraging in the beginning, but after all is said and done, it was the best possible outcome for my type of ACL tear.
