Forced R & R

Well it has come to that time for some "Forced R&R".

It's been over 3 years now since my last surgery and that was to have the Thomas Plate put in for a High Tibial Osteotomy (basically it was to stop bone on bone grinding in the knee...YEEK). Don't worry I wont go into the gruesome side of what was done, but I have attached the X-Ray image of the plate & screws. As you can see in the x-ray I had a T-Plate & 8 screws "installed" on the right leg.... It fixed the issue of bone on bone.

Anyway just about 1 year after having this operation, I was back at Taekwondo training, it was a hot night, sweat was dripping off everyone. I felt pretty good and at the end of the night we were running through practicing flying kicks into the Instructor holding a Kick bag....

O I forgot to mention, Um I'm not 16 years old any more and I was trying to keep up with the young ones...

Any way I had already done 2 kick leading with the right leg, gee it felt good hitting the bag, and I thought for the very last one I would swap legs and lead with the left, the run up was good the flying was good even the kicking the bag was great.... but the landing was the end of me. As I landed with my right leg, my foot slipped on a sweaty floor, it slipped straight out from under me and I went down like a big bag of spuds. The pain was excruciating - I knew it wasn't good.

I had this horrible feeling with the knee being extremely weak that I had done some major damage.... That was the end of the Taekwondo training. My worst fears were confirmed after having a CT Scan, the ACL was snapped....

Well I have put up with the snapped ACL for the last 2 years now, but the knee has become very unstable as well as impacting on my health considerably, so I have decided that I need that it is time to have it fix, but to have this fixed they first have to take my T-Plate & screws out. Then they can give me 2 new screws to hold in the new ACL....

I had the surgery yesterday and I am now back at home starting to recover, my Doctor was great, he had given me the T-Plate & screws that he removed (My spare parts :-D). I was quite shocked, the plate & screws are actually longer than what I expected, simply amazing what they can do. Here you can see just how long it is, I put a box of matches in so you can get an idea of how long it is.

So with all this finally done I have been forced on to a little bit of R&R unfortunately it wont be on a beach anywhere, hopefully after a couple of days I can get back online.