January 2010
Left Knee goes KA-BOOM and the season is over
I guess I'm lucky to have never had a blown ACL after all these years of skiing. But that streak ended on January 19th at Sierra at Tahoe on a beauty of a powder day. But I'm a House of Cards, so this was inevitable. First a little history about my left knee (and leg). In 2000 I was diagnosed with cancer (See The Cancer Daze for more on that). But the diagnosis was late and only discovered after my left leg had developed a DVT (Deep Vein Thrombosis) or blood clot in my inferior vena cava. That is the super highway for blood going from the legs back to the heart. The blood clot backed up in my left leg and had me motionless for weeks on a walker for over a month and on Coumadin for over a year. Left leg still swells on occasion and certainly doesn't circulate the blood as well as the right. Oh well, the cards I was dealt. In 2003 (with cancer in the rearview mirror) I developed a cyst in my left ACL. Doc Orr ultimately had to remove it arthoscopically, and in the process had to take about 30% of my ACL with it. He warned me that it would be weaker than my right knee and would likely wear out sooner. So with this in mind the blown left ACL of 2010 was not a total shocker. It was definitely caused by the moment of impact, but also partly due to the wear and tear of an already compromised ACL. I don't know what the cancer has to do with it other than it requires me to take blood thinners during recovery - but I threw that history in their anyway.
On Tuesday the 19th Josh and I were in Jack's bowl on our last run of a great morning of powder skiing at Sierra. The blown knee impact occurred while skiing over soft boulders through the trees the way I have countless times before. This particular boulder had a flat landing below it that could not have been discovered until airborne. I landed and compressed into the back seat, my butt sitting over the tails of my skis. I pulled my self back up right before the next drop. In that 1 second of action I felt my left knee dislocate and then return. There was some popping and clicking associated with that experience as well. I fell down and was lucky enough to yell to Josh before he flew right by me. I knew something was not right and was hoping it was just a gnarly sprain. I was a little surprised to stand up on it without much pain. So I side slipped out of the trees and even skied on the bad leg on Sugar and Spice down to the bottom. I clung to blind optimism about the knee until the next morning when it had significantly swollen. I saw my bud James Kane who gave it a good look over and told me to get an MRI. My next call was to my neighbor Len who set me up with an MRI the next day (prior to even seeing a doctor). I am so lucky to have friends like James and Len to help when things fall apart. Len walked me through the MRI in his office. He said the ACL was completely gone (not even much in the way of remnants), the MCL and LCL were both sprained, the medial meniscus was torn, the cartilage was damaged and the femur was fractured (really just a puncture from the tibia colliding with it). He said I needed to see Dr Orr and that my ski season was done.
Dr Orr is the US ski team doctor and was schedule to be gone for 6 weeks to attend the 2010 winter Olympics. So my goal was to get in with him and have the surgery done before he leaves town. I saw him the following Monday and he confirmed Len's diagnosis and then discussed how to reconstruct the ACL (I selected using my hamstring). Because of a nagging cough and my blood clot history I had to have a chest X-Ray, blood test and EKG done, I had to 3 doses of an antibiotic, had to get set up with Luvatrex and Coumadin (all in just a couple days) prior to surgery. On Thursday the 28th (day after Sophie's birthday) I was under the knife with Dr Orr and his crew. The surgery was supposed to take 2 hours, but ended up taking 4 1/2 hours. Besides the ACL / hamstring reconstruction, he repaired the meniscus (fortunately), elevated the puncture in the femur and did a microfracture repair to the tibia for the cartilage and tibia cracks. When it was all over he felt things went very well, but acknowledged that I had "done it right" in terms of blowing a knee. Glad to have impressed you Doc. My recovery includes 6 weeks on crutches (Zero weight bearing) and 6 months (minimum) for a full recovery. That takes me to August 1st. Definitely not skiing this year. Physcial Therapy will be my sanctuary and then maybe swimming and biking. The first few weeks were the worst - still had the cough, and the painful swelling and throbbing were no fun. Mentally I wanted it to stop snowing and for spring to begin as soon as possible. How's that for insanity! Jodi and the girls have picked up all the slack from blowing the driveway to taking out the trash to taking care of poor miserable me. And they have had enough of that too. Oh well, we've been through much worse, as have many, many others.
The knee 1 week post surgery. 2 incisions and 3 arthoscopic holes. The little orange pills helped a lot in this stage. The old scars on the shin are from biking and climbing carnage:
Deceptively Jolly?:
Last ski picture of the year. This was from our 2nd lap on Grandview on 1/19/10. Five runs later I'd blow the knee up. Great day though, huh?
And here are the final pictures from the ski days of January 2010.
On January 13th Jimbo and I had a great dawn patrol on Powderhouse:
Gonna miss the Buddy Werner Sundays:
After at least 6 years on Buddy Werner, this is Lissie's last year. She's a great skier and I'm going to miss her last season. But we have many ski days ahead of us. The Squew is definitely one of my lifelong ski partners!
And this was my first year having Sophie on my team. She's going to have a great year regardless. But I'm bummed to miss it. Always next year though.
Fortunately on January 16th I took Nora up to Sierra for her 2nd day of skiing ever. Now my other 3 daughters only wanted to ski 4 or 5 runs at this age. Not Nora, she uncorked 13 runs!
I am so glad I did this day with Nors before the knee injury.
Nora (aka Happy) was cruising!
...and I never even got down to the Eastside this year. Now that's painful!
SEE YOU NEXT YEAR.
- House of Cards