Third Time's a Charm

At least let's hope so.

I began today with a 3-hour visit to an orthopedist and came out with a band-aid on my knee. Oh, the irony. I've actually torn my ACL, again, along with the lateral meniscus, again. Just when I was getting my balance back, climbing strong, making real improvements and feeling great about myself, I'm careless and take a fall that could have been prevented, or at least minimized. A rewind button would be really, really handy right about now, as I look gloomily at 2 months in an immobilizing brace, 4 months of physical therapy and 6-9 months off of climbing. Lame doesn't even begin to describe this impending year.

Now I am seeking out the silver lining of the big dark cloud that just unleashed a downpour on my parade. Surely there is something rosy here, right? I'll have an allograph, meaning this time they won't be removing a tendon from somewhere else in my body to replace this one. Big plus. Hopefully it will speed recovery time, and leave me with a stronger ACL than I ever started with, since I was genetically blessed and cursed with ridiculously lax ligaments all over. My original tendons never actually grew back where they should have from my first two attempts at reconstruction, so as squeamish as it makes me to have a zombie ligament in me I am fully accepting of it this time around.

Normally I search for a prospect of hope instead of a scapegoat, but facing my 3rd trip around this block makes me think... what's gone wrong? Why didn't my original orthopedist - an official surgeon and therapist of the US Olympic Team and multiple professional athletes - fail in fixing me? Why didn't we wait until my little body was done growing so I wouldn't end up lopsided? Why in the hell did we even use my own flimsy tendons in the first place? If I weren't me, I'd be furious. But I am, so I'm just bothered and sad. For the first time, I'm having trouble visualising a happy ending of a fully functional joint. I find it hard to have faith in the procedure that's failed me twice already. Yet I'm here, hoping, hoping, hoping.

Rain, rain, go away. Come again another day...

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