I guess it all started about four and years ago in Chicago. I attended Loyola University Chicago for a semester, while my college, Loyola New Orleans, was dealing with the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in the Fall of 2005. After spending the first few weeks settling into the city, I decided that to go check out the run at the school's gym. Myself and my buddy Jack (who was in town from Annapolis, MD) quickly found a decent run, and, after a disjointed first game, I had settled into a rhythm early in the second game. Said rhythm came to a screeching halt about ten minutes in, when I drove down the lane and a guy collided with the side of my left knee. I fell to the ground in a hell of a lot of pain, and after a few unpleasent days on crutches, I decided it was time to see a doc. Unfortunately, this doc wasn't particularly keen on seeing me, and he basically rushed me out, calling it a sprain and a bone bruise and telling me to stay off it.
Fast forward four years to August 2009. With the aid of a bulky brace, I was able to return to sports about 6 months after the original knee injury. I was feeling pretty good, until during a game of soccer, I went to make a cut and my other (right) knee gave out. Feeling the same type of pain I had in Chicago, I decided to again see a doctor, assuming that it was only a sprain, or possibly a meniscus tear. As it turned out, it wasn't. After a short test of jerks and tweaks, my doctor (Michael Dillingham at SOAR in Redwood City, CA) confirmed that I had an ACL tear of my right knee. Surprised, I asked Dr. Dillingham to check my left knee just to make sure that there was nothing wrong with it. After the same test, he confirmed that my left ACL was also torn.
Dillingham basically gave me the choice of doing back-to-back knee surgeries, that would take about 18 months to get over, or the option of doing them both in one fell swoop. While the idea of having zero working legs for a few weeks and double the pain wasn't particularly enticing, twice the rehab time, twice the money, and twice the surgery seemed much worse. So I decided to get them both done at once.
Which leads us to today. And me, laid out on my back with two bulky braces, recovering from bilateral ACL surgery.
In the days leading up to the surgery, I was surprised at how difficult it was to find information on this procedure. For the countless "I Tore my ACL blogs", I could only find one blog that told the story of dealing with having both done simultaneously (it's a good one though — http://bit.ly/3y7GG), so I wanted to add another resource for those considering this type of surgery. Hope this is of use to someone....
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