The beginning of the nightmare was on the 20th January 2013, and since then I've been counting all the things that have been involved in the process. An injury like this sure requires a lot of all sorts of visits and it costs a lot of money:
1185 days
169 weeks and 3 days
28 440 hours
1 706 400 minutes
102 384 000 seconds
6 X-rays
3 MRI
2 CT-scans
1 cortisone injection
6 surgeries
30 surgeon appointments (5 different ones)
47 physiotherapy visits
30 days in hospitals
100 days in full-length cast
395 days in a knee brace
40 weeks on crutches
320 days of prescribed pain killers
60 days of stabbing myself with a needle
1000 hours of physio
<50 000€ (< $ 72 100) spent in everything above
I know that with all this my athletic life has changed and I will need to change some things in my way of doing, but my atletic life isn't over. I am able to do a lot of things of which I'm proud about, and every day I think of the people who have injuries way worse and I try to put things to perspective. My knee will never be perfect again and I might never be able to touch my butt with my heel, but that's okay. It's not a mandatory thing in life. I understood a while ago that even with this injury I'm not a loser or a quitter, I just do things differently and in my heart I'm a winner. Even though my way of achieving things changes, my goal remains, and my goal still is to one day be able to compete on a high level🏆From the inside, from my heart I am still an athlete although from the outside I might look like crap.
I'm proud of what I have achieved and where I am today. I know I'm still far away from the state I want to be in, but I'm working to achieve it. I can honestly say this injury has changed me in a good way. Appreciating everything I still have makes it easier to deal with the harder days. I still keep a lot of feelings inside without letting them out, but I'm trying to learn to spit it out at times. The biggest lesson I've learnt is that I should've appreciated more everything I had before my injury, I should've cherished every moment like it was the last time I experienced it. Not having done that is one of my biggest regrets, but I'll never be able to fix that anymore. You only know what happened in the past and what is happening at this very moment, but I didn't think enough about the fact that we do not know what will happen in one minutes or even one second, and really, everything can happen like this injury shows. I never thought something like this could've happened to me, I thought I was insurmountable right to the very moment my knee injury happened. At that moment I realized everything can change in the blink of an eye and I wasn't some kind of superhero who could just surpass all injuries and tackles and hits and kicks. I was only a human being who had to be unlucky enough to go through an injury like this.
Unlike a lot of people think, recovery from this is not just "doing rehab occasionally". It's something you have to work on every day and give a lot of thought. Now that I look back, I think I've really been harder on myself and pushed myself even more in the recovery after my latest reconstruction (11/2015) surgery than I did after my first one in 2013. The process is slow but it keeps moving and as long as it keeps getting better I will be grateful for every little thing I can do. I'm in a state where I can't afford injuring my knee again, because if I did injure it, the surgeons wouldn't be able to fix it anymore the ligsments, tendons and joints having suffered so much damage already. So I'm doing everything in my power to prevent that doing as much as possible at the same time.
30 surgeon appointments (5 different ones)
47 physiotherapy visits
30 days in hospitals
100 days in full-length cast
395 days in a knee brace
40 weeks on crutches
320 days of prescribed pain killers
60 days of stabbing myself with a needle
1000 hours of physio
<50 000€ (< $ 72 100) spent in everything above
I know that with all this my athletic life has changed and I will need to change some things in my way of doing, but my atletic life isn't over. I am able to do a lot of things of which I'm proud about, and every day I think of the people who have injuries way worse and I try to put things to perspective. My knee will never be perfect again and I might never be able to touch my butt with my heel, but that's okay. It's not a mandatory thing in life. I understood a while ago that even with this injury I'm not a loser or a quitter, I just do things differently and in my heart I'm a winner. Even though my way of achieving things changes, my goal remains, and my goal still is to one day be able to compete on a high level🏆From the inside, from my heart I am still an athlete although from the outside I might look like crap.I'm proud of what I have achieved and where I am today. I know I'm still far away from the state I want to be in, but I'm working to achieve it. I can honestly say this injury has changed me in a good way. Appreciating everything I still have makes it easier to deal with the harder days. I still keep a lot of feelings inside without letting them out, but I'm trying to learn to spit it out at times. The biggest lesson I've learnt is that I should've appreciated more everything I had before my injury, I should've cherished every moment like it was the last time I experienced it. Not having done that is one of my biggest regrets, but I'll never be able to fix that anymore. You only know what happened in the past and what is happening at this very moment, but I didn't think enough about the fact that we do not know what will happen in one minutes or even one second, and really, everything can happen like this injury shows. I never thought something like this could've happened to me, I thought I was insurmountable right to the very moment my knee injury happened. At that moment I realized everything can change in the blink of an eye and I wasn't some kind of superhero who could just surpass all injuries and tackles and hits and kicks. I was only a human being who had to be unlucky enough to go through an injury like this.
Unlike a lot of people think, recovery from this is not just "doing rehab occasionally". It's something you have to work on every day and give a lot of thought. Now that I look back, I think I've really been harder on myself and pushed myself even more in the recovery after my latest reconstruction (11/2015) surgery than I did after my first one in 2013. The process is slow but it keeps moving and as long as it keeps getting better I will be grateful for every little thing I can do. I'm in a state where I can't afford injuring my knee again, because if I did injure it, the surgeons wouldn't be able to fix it anymore the ligsments, tendons and joints having suffered so much damage already. So I'm doing everything in my power to prevent that doing as much as possible at the same time.
