It has been one year since I got MPFL Reconstruction on my left knee. The phrase “one year” carries so much weight because so many things of happened during this time, knee related and unrelated.

I am amazed at how tenacious the human body is. One year ago my leg was sliced open, two holes were drilled into my bone with a legit drill, my own ligament was taken out, and cadaver ligament was looped into the two holes. Today, I am fully recovered and most of the time I feel as if I never got this surgery at all.

Physical Therapy

Picking up from my last post, I only went to three more physical therapy sessions. At that point it was my choice whether I wanted to continue with physical therapy. I thought I was ready to complete the exercises at home, which is what I still do right now. From November to now, I have gradually increased the intensity of the physical therapy exercises and have also added others such as burpees, mountain climbers, and leg lifts. I do the exercises with my brace, usually three to four times a week for an hour each time.

Pain

I really do not feel any pain these days. Maybe once every two weeks there will be a period of time where the surgery area will ache, but it is not anything I am worried about. However, there is still the crunching and clicking sensation in my knee. Sometimes when I stand in a weird position for a while and I move my left leg, I find that my leg is locked and I have to struggle to “unlock” it. I am fine with this; I would take crunching, clicking, and locking over the fear of a knee dislocation anyday. Surgery does not completely fix your situation, it significantly improves your life, and that is more than I could ever ask for.

Strength

I feel like both of my legs are at the same size and strength now! I remember on the first day of physical therapy I could not even contract my left quad or lift my leg, but now my left leg can do everything that my right leg can. I can bend my left leg without any “warming up,” but there’s still a tangible stiffness compared to my right. When I squat all the way down and come back up there’s a weird crackling noise and sensation in my left knee. It is not painful, just uncomfortable, so I try not to do it often.

Also, I am back in my school gym class. I was dreading it, but it’s actually tolerable! I have realized that sitting in class for seven hours is borderline torture, and it is nice to move around for a period, even if it is gym class.

Scarring

For some reason my skin leaves marks after the slightest cut. For example, you can still see a dark pink line on my thumb where I cut myself on my instrument case in November. So, I’ve accepted the fact that my scars will not fade much anytime soon. From November to now, they have not really faded. Here are a few pictures:

Running

I think one of my biggest milestones in my entire recovery process is that I participated in a 5k on Thanksgiving. Of course, I only ran about less than a quarter of it, but I was really proud of myself for completing the entire course. I think my next goal will be to run an entire 5k in the near future.

Other than that Thanksgiving 5k, I have been steadily increasing how much I run, especially from late February to now. I run without my brace. Unfortunately, I am not returning to cross country, but I think it is for the better because I do not want to risk injury from overuse of legs.

In June I took my first neighborhood walk. I remember I was winded after walking half a mile! I have certainly come a long way since then. In August, I was comfortable with walking the neighborhood loop, which is 1.3 miles. I did all my running on the treadmill at physical therapy, so I did not run around in the neighborhood until December. From December to February, I ran and walked the neighborhood loop in intervals and gradually increased the amount I ran. Running a trail is much different from just running on a treadmill because there are many hills, and you are exposed to the weather. Even though I could run a straight mile on the treadmill, it took much more effort to run a full mile around the neighborhood.

In early February (2/8), I decided I was ready to run the entire loop. Up to that point I had worked on maintaining stamina to run the entire thing without stopping, but actually running it without stopping proved to be much more difficult! In the beginning, I was feeling confident, but once I hit the half mile mark I started tiring out. My brief experiences from cross country kicked in and I pushed myself for the latter half of the neighborhood loop. When I was done I felt like I had just run an entire 5k, and I was super exhausted but also super happy! That was the first time I had run an entire neighborhood loop since September 2017.

That run was my “breakthrough” run. Three days later I did my first hills workout (essentially just running up and around the longest and steepest hill of the neighborhood) since fall of 2017. Even though I only did three sets, it was certainly a start. Also, ever since February 8, the neighborhood loop has gotten easier every time I run it.

Last week (March 18 I want to say) was the first time I ran the neighborhood loop backwards without stopping. The backwards neighborhood loop has more hills so it is more difficult. And, two days ago (March 27) was the first time I ran the backwards neighborhood loop twice nonstop! That is about 2.6 miles, which is the longest nonstop run I have done since surgery. My ultimate goal is four nonstop neighborhood loops, and I am also experimenting with new paths.

One Year Checkup

Unfortunately, my one year checkup was not today. It would be awesome if it was, though! I will update this post if I learn anything new and exciting. It is in a week.

Finally, I want to thank every single person that has made my surgery and recovery successful and smooth. You guys are all GOATs. I also want to thank my donor who gave me the new ligament which has allowed my knee to function properly. All of you have made my life that much better. 

Well, that is all I have to say about my knee for now. I will do a two-year update, and that will probably be the last time I write about my knee here!

Katie