The first

I've been thinking about writing a blog like this for a long time, but have never really got into it. But better later than never, and I think it's a good time to start it now.

Who am I?

I'm an 18-year-old high school girl from Finland, very passionate about all kinds of sports. I have played soccer, floorball, hockey, I have done track&field, I've swum, and done trampoline jumping..so pretty much tried everything ;)

What's this blog about?

This blog will mostly concentrate on my rehabilitation journey from a bad knee injury. I don't do this to get any pity or sorries, but to give everyone with this injury hope and stength, and hopefully some ideas for their own rehabs too. I want to share my experience and show that with passion and motivation and hard work anything is possible. Great things never came being in the comfort zone. This blog is about dreams, about a long recovery process that takes energy, sweat and tears, it's about a life-long journey that I want to share with other people. 

What happened?

Since this is my first time talking about my injury, I'd better tell what happened from the very beginning. It was January 20th 2013, we were playing a tournament in a small town in Central Finland; it was a cold Sunday morning and we were on our last five minutes of the game. I went to pick up a high ball from our side of the field and two girls from the opponent team were following me. We all jumped to get the ball and then, next thing I remember was lying on the field screaming like a crazy person. One of the girls was on my leg and I managed to push her off of me. I remember looking at my leg and then screaming more. Nobody really realized what was going on, then two adults from our team came to my side and they immediately saw something was really really wrong...

The pain was immense, something so unbearable that I wish I could've been dead instead. I saw my leg just hanging on the side, my knee cap being behind my knee. Two medical ladies came and asked me if I was okay - "seriously ladies just go away", I thought. I kept screaming and crying at the same time, everything was blurry and I couldn't really picture anyone around me.

The game was interrupted, and we waited for the ambulance to come for over an hour and a half, when they finally came they kept moving me from one stretcher to another and everything my knee hurt more, there was nothing to support it and it felt like my knee was completely detached. I was taken to the biggest hospital in Central Finland, and in anesthesia they my knee cap back on its place. When I woken up the doctor told me it was very close that my circulation hadn't stopped, the knee had been dislocated for so long.

After that I was put into an ambulance taxi and after a 5-hour drive I was in the biggest Children's Hospital in Southern Finland. I was so tired that I just wanted to go home, but unfortunately that was not the case. I stayed there for a week for numerous tests and examinations and imagings. MRI report was pretty devastating: ACL, PCL and MCL totally ruptured with major tendon and nerve damages as well. I got to go home for a week to wait for the swelling to go down a little bit so that the knee could be operated. Then a new hospital visit was made, this time for the surgery. I had my knee reconstruction surgery done February 6th 2013. I woke up in a terrible pain, I thought it would be over after the surgery but it was at least as bad as when the injury happened. I had a full leg cast for a month and a full leg brace for 4 months. My doctor said I should not take going back to sports for granted anymore, running could be over for me; but this I didn't want to believe. I did homeschooling for 6 weeks, it was way easier with all the pain medication and cast going on.
This was only the beginning of a long road which I'm going to tell about in my next blog text.