**WARNING – THERE WILL BE SOME GRAPHIC IMAGES OF THE INSIDE OF MY KNEE—WARNING**

So, to start things off, I want to give a bit of a history.  I’ve led a pretty active lifestyle.  I learned how to skate when I was 2 and started playing hockey when I was 4 and I played until I was 18.  I also played soccer for a year, baseball for about 4 years, softball off and on throughout the years, American football for 3 years, professional wrestling for about 3 years, and martial arts off and on since I was 6 years old.  Also, I just started playing hockey again when I was 46 and played regularly for the last 3 years.

To say that I’ve had injuries in my life is a bit of an understatement.  I’ve had sprained ankles, torn ligaments in my fingers and strained knees, just to name a few things.

The first time I had any serious issues was when I was in the Navy.  This would be back in about 1991 or 1992.  I started having some pain in my left knee, and then I noticed that I had a lump on the side of my knee.  I went to the corpsman on base to have it checked out.  At first, they told me it was just strained ligaments and gave me some ibuprofen.  That went on for a few weeks, but it didn’t help anything.  I remember looking in their medical book and seeing something the describe all the symptoms that I was having, so I questioned him.  He didn’t like that very much, but I ended up being right.  They eventually did send me for an MRI and found out that I had a cyst on my knee.  The civilian doctor they sent me to decided that he wanted to go in and look into my knee to see what was causing the cyst.  Come to find out, part of my meniscus was deteriorating, which was causing the cyst, so he removed that part of the meniscus and the cyst ended up going away.  Now, I wasn’t a very good patient, and that night, I was at the pool hall on base and was shooting pool, walking around the pool table.  Not good for healing, but things worked out OK.  

Now, it’s been 29 years since that surgery, and I’ve played softball, practiced and taught yoga, studied Tai chi, studied Muay Thai, went back to karate and earned my Shodan (first degree black belt), gone back to ice hockey and played ball hockey.  All of which I’ve enjoyed.  I’ve had some bumps and bruises along the way, but nothing major.

As a matter of fact, the worst injury that I had (until recently) was when I strained a ligament in my finger, which I did during a karate class.  Was actually kind of funny.  I thought I had dislocated my finger, so I kept trying to pop it back into join, but nothing was happening.  It didn’t hurt at that moment, so I kept trying.  I showed my Sensei, and he said I should go to the doctors, which I did the next day.  Strained ligament in my finger, which cause the end to drop.  

After that, I had tendonitis in my shoulder, but that’s wasn’t too bad, they just had me do rehab and they gave me a shot, and some exercises to do.

About a year and a half ago, I was playing in an ice hockey tournament here in Bangkok, in one of the games, I clashed skates with another player and when down on my knees hard and popped my left knee out of joint, but when I stood back up, it went right back in.  I didn’t think much about it as this isn’t the first time that’s happened.  It happens when it pops out, while it’s out and when it goes back in, then it feels fine.  It was sore after the game, but nothing bad.  I finished up playing in the tournament and playing in the Bangkok Ice Hockey League (BIHL) and playing shinny every week for the Flying Farangs.  Some days, it was sorer than others and it would pop out of joint more often than before.  It was popping out of joint at least once a day.  That was a horrible feeling.  Sometimes, I would be sitting at my desk at work and pull my foot in under my chair, and my knee would pop out of joint.  I would have to slowly push my foot back out, sometimes with my other foot, just to get it to pop back into joint.  

Then, this past February (2020), I was asked to put together a team for an ice hockey tournament in Chiang Mai.  This was the first time I had put together a team for a tournament, so it was pretty exciting.  I decided to take a couple of weeks off from hockey to rest my knee before the tournament.  After the first game, my knee felt pretty good.  During the second game, I did something to my knee, I don’t know what, but it was sore after the game. It was progressively sorer after each game.  When we got back to Bangkok, I decided to take a month off hockey to rest it.

After I was feeling up to it again, there was an open shinny night for the SHL, so I decided to sign up for it and play.  After the game, I was feeling great.  I didn’t take any bad falls or twists or anything like, and my knee felt really good.  The next day, I felt great as well.  No pain or any issues.  This SHL shinny was on a Sunday.

That Wednesday, I had a demo lesson with a new school.  I was in a separate room, with some other teachers, waiting my turn to put on my demo lesson, sitting in a little chair made for kindergarten students.  I stood up to walk around and was suddenly in so much pain.  There was definitely something wrong with my knee.  I couldn’t put any weight on my leg because my knee felt so bad.  I tried walking it off, but nothing helped.  When it was my turn to do the demo lesson, I apologized to the school and let them know that I had hurt my knee somehow, but I still did the demo lesson.  After that, I got back on my bike and had to ride 45 minutes home.  When I got home, I relaxed and laid down a bit, in hopes that the pain would go away.  After about an hour, the pain didn’t go away.  I was starting to worry that I had done something to the ligaments in my knee.  Tore my ACL or MCL or something.  We decided to go to the hospital to see a doctor.

The doctor was pretty cool.  His name is Cholawish Chanlalit.  He listened to everything I said, gave my knee a thorough check, twisting it and turning it, which hurt like a sombitch, and then send me for an x-ray.  As is usual with things like this, the x-ray didn’t show much, and he put an order in for an MRI.  He also put in for me to see a physio therapist one time and got me some crutches to use.  After my MRI, they doctor told me that there was some cartilage damage in my knee, and he wanted to go in and clean out the damaged cartilage as well as perform microfracture surgery, which is where they drill small holes into the bone to get the marrow blood to bleed into the space where the cartilage has been removed.  What this does is it creates a cushion like cartilage from the blood, but the blood must set, so you can’t walk on that leg for a couple of weeks.

What the MRI didn’t show was that my meniscus was torn.  So, when he was inside my knee, he cleaned up the cartilage, drilled the holes in the bone and then stitched the torn piece of meniscus back in place.  

Because of this, I couldn’t walk for 7 weeks.  From not walking on my left leg for 7 weeks, I had to then rebuild all the muscle in my left leg and around my left knee.  This felt like such a long healing process to me, and the healing process had just begun.  

So, I was on crutches for 7 weeks, and the good thing about this is that it was during our lockdown period, so I couldn’t really go anywhere anyway.  Once I got the go ahead to start walking, I started walking as much as possible.  Walking with a heavy limp, but still walking.  Going up and down stairs and damn did it hurt, but I kept doing it.  I also started seeing a physiotherapist to help rebuild the strength in my leg the correct way.  This was so difficult for me, because I’ve always had fairly strong legs, and I felt so weak in my left leg.  Just doing body weight squats was really difficult for me, but I kept working on it.  I did lots of walking, sometimes maybe a little bit too much walking, but it felt good.  I still wasn’t allowed to skate yet, which sucked.  The doctor told me that maybe by I will be able to skate and play hockey in October.

So, after about 13 weeks of physiotherapy, my doctor said I could start skating and rollerblading again, because it is a non-impact on the knee joint.  I waited about 2 weeks, and then I tried to go rollerblading, but I was told to stop, because they didn’t allow rollerblading in the park we were at.  Then, a week later, I went with some friends to one of the local ice rinks to take them skating for the first time.  I didn’t go fast, and I didn’t go hard into turns or stopping or anything, I just took it easy.  It felt so good to be back on the ice.

These last few weeks, the strength in my left knee seems to be almost as strong as the strength in my right knee, which is great. This is all to how hard my physiotherapist has worked me.  There have been so many times, especially lately, after our sessions, my legs have felt so weak, but that’s good.  It’s nice to feel the strength and mobility returning to my knee.

Well, sorry for being such a long post, I hope it wasn’t too boring, but I had a lot to say.

Always remember: No matter what bad things happen in your life, if you want it bad enough, you can fight through it.