As you might know from Instagram or Twitter, I’ve had surgery recently because I tore my ACL. But before I could talk about after that, I thought I should post a few pictures and details about how it all happened.
Alex loves to ski, but living in the UK, and having him work away so much, he’s not had the opportunity to go very much in the last few years. We found that Snoqualmie is fairly close to our house (45 miles which amuses me that it’s the same distance between Bristol and Swindon.)
Alex bought a set of three lessons for me to learn the basics, and he went off skiing further up the mountain with some friends.
The thing that amazed me each time we went was that we’d be zooming along I-90 (the motorway that runs from Seattle over the lake and out to the east) and then all of a sudden, there were massive snow banks as we got to the junction)
The first day we went, it was super early and the skies looked like this, but then they would suddenly go bright blue!
My first lesson was a bit rubbish to be honest – the class had about 12 people in it, and I didn’t feel like we got much actual instruction. I called up the school in the week to check what time my next lesson was and ended up speaking to the head of the school who really reassured me and made me feel much more confident. My second lesson was much better – I was in a smaller group with 3 others, and we had 2 or 3 instructors with us. If all of the lessons had been like this, perhaps I would have enjoyed the first lesson!
My third lesson had different weather – the snow felt much harder underneath. The group we had for the lesson was larger (I think there were 6-8 people in the group?) and we walked up to the top of the hill next to the magic carpet. I was first to go down, and was trying to turn to slow down but it just wasn’t working! The instructor was shouting at me to slow down (which…not helpful.) and I fell at the bottom of the hill, right in front of a group of little kids! My knee was in a lot of pain, but I figured I just sprained or twisted it a bit, and eventually hobbled off back to the lodge (They asked if I wanted ski patrol but I turned it down because I thought that was just overkill!) I went back to the car and rested while everyone else was doing their thing.
Alex pestered me to go to a hospital about the knee but I did the most British thing and put it off for a few days until he pointed out that if something was wrong, it was better to deal with it now so I’d be better for next winter (which I’m still not sure about…) I went to someone his boss recommended, and they took x-rays and an MRI, and told me a few days later that I had torn my ACL and sprained both my LCL and MCL.
I had my operation a fortnight ago and everything has been fine so far! I had a patellar tendon graft reconstruction of the ACL which is where they take a bit of the muscle from below my kneecap and use that to replace the ACL. Don’t look up that surgery if you don’t like gross body images! (For some really odd reason, they provided photos of inside my knee from during the surgery and told Alex all about it as I was coming round. Lucky him.) I have a brace on my knee and have crutches and THEY ARE A TOTAL BALLACHE. I had a CPM (continuous passive motion) machine which bent my knee for me, and I’ve just started physio which has been great so far!
It’s been super frustrating so far, because I can’t do as much as I normally would but I’m thankful that we have good insurance and that I can start getting better now!