I haven't been updating my blog as frequently since things are consistent week-to-week. And more importantly, I'm pretty much back to my pre-injury self. With that being said, this will probably be my last update.
Ever since I tore my acl, many people have told me that my knee "will NEVER be the same", which is something that has haunted me just about my entire recovery. I mean, think about it. You just turned 20 and someone's telling you that your knee is going be worse off from now on. Forever. I hated feeling like that *one* tackle almost 2 years ago cost me a lifetime of being deficient in one knee. And on top of that, lots of teammates around me who had gotten knee surgery in the past started tearing their ACL in the other knee (you're at an elevated risk of tearing the other one once you've torn the first one). After hearing that, who in their right mind would be like "I'm going to return to playing a full-contact sport!" Personally, my immediate reaction was "Yep. Never leaving the house again."
While there is some truth in what I was told, it's not nearly as bad as I thought it would be. Most days, I don't feel any pain or instability in my left knee. It's become a habit to make sure I'm not favoring my left side: Without really thinking about it, I'll be reminding myself to make sure I'm engaging my quad muscles when going up stairs, pushing off evenly when jogging, etc. But for everyday routine stuff, I can do what I need to do without being reminded that one of my knees is "deficient", which is certainly an improvement.
In the first 6 months, my knee would bother me in the mornings if I hadn't stretched it out yet, if I sat for too long in one position, or if it was about to rain. Now that I'm at 10 months, I can sit for hours and when I finally do stand up, there's hardly a noticeable difference in stiffness between my two knees.
After a really tough workout when my entire body feels like Jell-O, I'm more conscientious than I used to be about making sure the wobbly feeling is normal and not a warning sign. If I run long distances on back-to-back days for a full week, I'll feel a little weaker and unstable. But this is pretty typical for anybody recovering from a tough workout - the only difference is that one knee feels it a little more than the rest of my body.
I'm able to do everything I was doing before the injury, but now with more appreciation of the activity. If I'm hitting up mile 4 of my run and feeling terrible, I tell myself "fuck yeah, wheezing up this hill feels way better than being stuck in bed all day. Embrace it." Am I afraid of tearing my other ACL? Absolutely. Is the recovery tough? Yep. Do I sometimes wonder if I could've gone without the surgery? Naturally. But at the end of the day, the recovery has not been nearly as debilitating (long term) as I feared it would be and has made me realize that none of us are invincible.