Diagnosis

 "So what happened?" "What's wrong" "How long do you need to be in this" 

Since my ski accident end of January, I am stuck in an impressive brace where I hear I jokes that I'm robocop now.  For people that. have seen it on picture first, it seems bigger in real life.

Tomorrow it's been 4 weeks since I had my accident and it finally seems to become clear what happened and what is the road ahead.

When we just returned, the doctors and physiotherapist seemed optimistic but nobody dared to declare anything certain without having seen an MRI. And getting an MRI in short term was a challenge.  The hospital of my preference, one of Belgium's biggest centres here at a few kms of our house, gave me an appointment in the 2nd half of April. Whoaaa.   Fortunately my GP then pushed at the local hospital, which is in fact at walking distance of our house and with her pressure I got an appointment on Feb 7th. What a relief! 

The verdict

A few days later, I knew the verdict: my first cruciate ligament was completely torn and there was a stress fracture. 

But now I was waiting for an appointment at the orthopaedic knee surgeon to know what we'd do with this analysis.  History repeated itself: I could easily book an appointment one or 2 months later, but again my GP agreed that I should not wait so long with my injury.   I was put on the list of semi -urgent cases but my patience was still tested and after a week of silence and another call with my GP, I finally got an appointment.

and last Tuesday, 3,5 weeks after my accident I got the entire insight.  The stress fracture is related to the accident but nothing more than a harmless crack that will cure.  And since I am 40+ and not practising much active sports such as basketball, football, yearly skiing, ... I do not get surgery (to my relief).  I'm not sure whether next year's I'll be joining the rest of the family on a skitrip on the slope itself, but we'll see that later.  With physiotherapy I should be able to do simple walking again in 6-8 weeks.  And in the future I should be able to walk, swim and bike without issue. 


But now first I need to get over my mental block to practise and test my balance without my brace.  I do not trust yet that my knee has substantially changed already since it drastically gave up on me and collapsed me multiple times.  A bit to the surprise of both the physiotherapist and the surgeon, I have not experimented at all to take off my brace.  I've been very disciplined to wear it the entire time.  But at one point I'll need to take it off.  And that thought is still scary right now.  But I'm also very motivated to progress well before the Easter vacation.