Ouch
What I didn't mention in the Drunk Bunnies post yesterday is that there was a reason I only played two hours last week, and it happened on Friday.I'd skated during the day on Friday and felt very, very good. My arms were actually moving with my legs now (a trivial thing, on the surface, but I hadn't relaxed enough to do it properly), and my speed had increased (almost alarmingly, given my low stopping skills). Crossovers felt very natural at a higher speed.
So, it was all good.
Eli skated at intermission of the Stars' game game on Friday night, so after he skated, I carried his bag out to the parking lot. On the way to the car, on a perfectly level, well-paved parking lot, I took a step, planted my right foot, and it felt like my knee exploded. Boom goes the dynamite, as it were.
I have a fairly high pain threshold, allegedly, but on a scale of 1-10, this was a 9, and that's only because I can't imagine a 10.
I managed to make it to the car, put up the bag, and limped back into the arena.
All weekend, it got worse. I was wearing one of those elastic sleeves on my knee, and icing it regularly, but it didn't matter. And after I sat for a while, it was really difficult to straighten my leg out fully when I did get up.
On Monday, I went to see my sports massage therapist, who is awesome beyond all description. She worked on my knee for about five minutes and said, "I think you need to brace yourself. There's way too much swelling for this to be muscular, and I don't like what I'm feeling." Her best guess: torn meniscus and torn MCL. And she said it was possible that the ACL was involved as well, due to the degree of swelling.
Ah, hell.
She recommended an orthopedist and I went to see him this morning. He did a few functional tests, made me almost jump off the table with one of them, and said, "I think it's the meniscus. I think your MCL is okay."
He sent me for an MRI, which I completed a few hours ago, and I'm already scheduled for surgery on Friday unless the MRI shows something he didn't expect.
Bad news? Not hardly. If it's just arthroscopic meniscus repair, I can be on an exercise bike by Monday. Four weeks of hard rehab, then back to skating. I'll lose very little of my fitness level, I can improve my leg strength in the meantime, and it should all be fine.
If it had been the MCL/ACL as well, that would have been 9+ months of really, really tough rehab, and I don't think I would have felt the same for over a year.
Dodged a bullet there.
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