Move out of your comfort zone - try something new

~ In the end we only regret the chances we didn't dare to take ~ 

 When you first hear you might never be able to do the sports you used to do before then injury, your world collapses for a while. You can't understand why something like this happened, or more, specifically, why it happened to you. You shake your head, can't believe what you have just heard, probably cry a bit too. Well, at least I did. 

At first, it feels really like there's nothing left, it's like a carpet would've been pulled away from under your feet. The first few days you don't really understand what has happened. Withing the next weeks that follow the reality hits hard and you start realizing you had a serious injury that completely changed your life.

I've been lucky to have close friends and family and experts close to me pretty much at all times. But like everyone knows, the true passion and desire to get better has to come from yourself, you have to believe in it and want it. Of course I have days where I hope this would've happened to someone else, or easier, to no one. And there are days that I look at my old team pictures from football and track&field asnd I cry by myself and days I watch games and hope I could jump in on the field. Like nothing had happened, like I used to do before.

As time has past and I'm 3,5 years post-op my first accident I have finally begun to accept the fact that there's life beyond football and track&field too, and that there are plenty of sports I can still do and that I have to appreciate everything I can still do. And that's why I have started to be interested in a whole new sport: triathlon.
Triathlon is a sport that combines three elements that I have been doing through different stages of my recovery; swimmin, biking and running. It combines strength, endurance and speed. And it combines happiness, joy and competitiveness. Sounds pretty perfect to me. Biking and swimming have both been part of my rehab in all five surgeries and they are good for the knee; the movement is stable and there's not too much pressure on the newly constructed joints and ligaments. Running is a bit trickier since it is pretty tough on your lower body especially and most runs are done on pavements. Running is the only activity that really causes troubles with my knee because but thast's why I've been working on getting strength in my knee and get my knee more functional.

~After a successful triathlon we deserve a tasty melon ~

I have really enjoyed the feeling you get from triathlon and actually this May (5.5) I did a triathlon with one of my very best friends, Maija ♥ It was our second triathlon we complete together. Our triathlon was composed of 8,5km of running + 50,6km cycling + 1000m swimming and a honeydew melon cut in half to finish off the great day. Doing triathlons I've felt the same kind of happiness I felt playing football or competing in tarck&field; the feeling when you feel you more alive than anywhere else. The passion and euphoria you feel are something hard to find from anywhere else. 
I am very happy that I've found a sport that brings happiness like football and track&field did. Of course I still hope deep in my heart that one day I could compete in heptathlon in track&field and play football but somehow I have learnt that if I couldn't it's not the end of the world. The world is full of amazing sports I can still do and full of sports I can find happiness from. Nothing will ever replace the hole football and track&field left in my heart but when you I've seen that I didn't learn to appreciate what I had and what I was able to do before the injury happened to me.

Life is a journey that will never stop because every day is a new chance to grow as a person, learn something new about yourself and about others. Life doesn't have a finish line either. It's not about surviving through the moments, it's appreciating the moments as they come whether they were good or bad because we always have something to learn. 

In order to keep close of my own sports, football and track&field,  I started coaching last fall. It has been a way for me to prevent a mental breakdown because cosaching means keeping the sport close to my heart. Recently I also started coaching a more competitive track&field group and now coach 5 days/week which has been awesome. I haven't started coaching football yet because it is stil la weak spot for me mentally. In track&field I still have a slight chance to get back on the track but in football as time goes by and I see how my knee is it is very unlikely, read almost impossible, for me to get back on the field and that is one of the reasons I haven't been ready yet to start coaching football. But I think that in the future thast will be an option for me. 
I'm especially glad to be able to share my passion and my knowledge to other young future athletes nand it is great to see the effort they put into training. Of course it is hard sometimes to see them doing something you used to do and are not able to do today but most of the time I'm just happy to be able to spend time on the track and if and when I have the time working out myself, for who knows, maybe a future greater interest and investment in triathlon. 

Numb3rs

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.

Never Say Never

The first thoughts I had when I injured my knee were: Would I be able to play soccer again? Would I be able to compete in track&field again? and Would I ever be able to do the sports I love at the level I was before the injury?
I know I'm certainly not the only one thinking of these kinds of facts after being injured. The one thing I realized after the injury was how much I took doing sports and what I loved for granted, well, now I can say I've learned to appreciate and value what I've still got.

1. What kind of sports can I do after an injury like this?
It's a really hard question because everyone is so different and every injury is one of a kind. Before the injury I competed in both soccer and track&field, I trained almost every day of the week, and didn't like to rest, I hated it. I'd rather go doing anything but sitting on my butt doing nothing. I loved competing and training, and I loved pushing myself. At the age of 14 I was (almost) on the top of the world, but little did I know that I'd fall to the bottom quite soon.
My doctors and physios keep saying to me that soccer is a very risky game and heptathlon is very demanding too. They haven't totally said NO to them, but I have seen enough doctors to understand their face expressions. I know soccer is very demanding and hard on knees, especially injured ones. And I know heptathlon is very challenging too since it includes hurdles, long and high jump, shot put, javelin throw, 200m run and 800m run. So yes, I sure haven't picked sports easy on my legs.
Long ago, I promised to myself that I would fight back from this. I wouldn't let this injury ruin my happiness. I have decided that I'll give it my everything I have in my body; passion, determination, all the energy. And I will try to get back to those sports.

It is hard to say whether you can do some sports after knee reconstructions or not. In my situations both are very unlikely to happen, but never say never to your dreams without having tried to achieve them. Everything is possible if you believe in it. If you can't do one sports, you'll probably fins something similar or something that you enjoy in the same way.


2. Is running possible?
Hard to say. It depends on the age, the severity of the injury and the pain. Before my surgery in November 2015 I wasn't sure whether I'll be able to ever run again. Already in the end of 2014 my doctor in Canada had diagnosed me with a total tear of the ACL (anterior cruciate ligament), PCL (posterior cruciate ligament), MCL (medial collateral ligament) and a partial tear of the POL-tendon. My whole knee was dislocated which meant my tibia and femur bones too were in a strange abnormal angle.

So he told me not to run before the surgery in November. I wasn't gonna let him determine my future because I knew I would become depressed without sports. So I decided I would work my muscles back to have good muscles around the knee to give it some support my broken ligaments couldn't offer anymore.
I pushed myself to get strong muscles and I did. In March I slowly started jogging again to see how it feels. It wasn't exactly mind-blowing but it was a start. By the end of June I had slowly increased my running distances to about 20-25km. Running felt good again, I always taped my knee before each run to give it an additional support and it worked. When I came back to Finland I knew I had a couple more months to go before my actual 5th knee surgery. So I used that time increasing my running distances more. I took part to a half-marathon in September and during October and November I consecutively ran 46km - 51km - 57km runs.
So yes, running is possible in some cases. I know I still have a long way to go to get to those distances again, but this week I reached one milestone because I took my first steps JOGGING since my surgery. It feels great to be on the go again.

3. What do I do when it hurts?
There's no need to say that pain is pretty obvious after a knee reconstruction done. Some days it feels better, some days I feel like I can't get out of bed. It is still my choice to get out of that bed no matter what. Normally after a workout the knee is a little sore, of course. I have become pretty pain tolerant and I can manage with pain to a very high level. I don't often show when it hurts so it is very hard to say when it hurts and when it doesn't. Despite that, the one thing I've learned is that when there's pain it is sometimes good to tell someone about it. The one I talk about pain is normally my physio. First because he understands and second, because I feel comfortable with him. But I only talk to him about physical pain. With mental pain I try to manage by myself.
Having said that I still think it is better to let someone know about the pain, whether it is a relative, a family member or a doctor/physio. If it's a professional their job is to help you. If it's a loved one, it's someone who will support you and help you on bad days.

4. My future plans?

I am currently 4 months post-op and I'm feeling good. Of course some days are harder than the others and I still think of why this happened to me on bad days. But the past is the past and it can't be changed. The future is ahead of me and I can still decide what I want to do. So I try to look to the future but still live one day at the time and enjoy the moment. I'm allowed to bike and swim now, and I will slowly start jogging. I see my physio twice or three times a month and he helps me with my muscle strenghtening and mobility of the knee. My goal is to get back to running in the summer and achieve my goal of playing soccer and competing in track&field one day, eventually. Those aren't yet, but I'm working my way towards them.


I have learned that in order to continue my life after the injury I have to forgive myself. I have to forgive myself for having been injured because I forgave the players who injured me right away. Forgiving myself has been a long process and I'm still working with it. I have let go of the past and try not to think of why this happened. I'd rather think that everything here happens for a reason and this was a step my life took and it has made me a better and a stronger person. Letting go of the past hasn't meant I've forgotten what happened the days I injured myself. They will sta with me for the rest of my life and they are a part of me now.
Injury taught me how to face challenges. Before it I didn't face them, I only ignored them. But moving forward requires facing challenges. Never say never, because as long as you have faith in what you are doing and you believe in yourself and in your dreams anything is possible.

tips for knee injury management

Having thought of writing a new post for two months I finally found the time to do so. I've been busy with school, some national exams coming up, exam weeks, knee rehabilitation and coaching.

This time I figured I could write down some tips I've learned (or not quite yet learned, but noticed) during my 3 years of recovery from multiple knee surgeries and injuries. I "celebrated" my knee's 3-year anniversary January 20th and it evokes lots of emotions when I go back to that day in 2013.

1. DON'T COMPARE YOURSELF TO OTHERS
From what I've learned these past years, do not compare you injury to other people's injuries. Everyone is different and every injury is different, every rehabilitation is that being said, different. I know this is hard because I find myself comparing my knee injury to other's but it makes me frustrated, angry and sometimes sad, more than anything else. So focus on your own injury and its rehab process.


2. SHARE YOUR THOUGHTS WITH OTHER INJURED
I learned this point last year during my exchange year in Canada. When I injured my knee - again - in November 2014, I became really depressed. Nothing made me laugh anymore and it was difficult for me to find something that I enjoyed doing. I ate like crap sometimes and that made me feel even worse. Then I found this wonderful, amazing support site through which I've made some really good friends with whom I can share experiences and exchange thoughts. It really is like mental medicine and sometimes when I come up with questions there normally is someone who has experienced similar things. Again, remember not to compared your injuries, but I must say it really does help, A LOT!!

3. FIND A PHYSIO YOU LIKE TO WORK WITH
This has been a very major part of my rehabilitation process. And I can't stop saying it, but start working with a physio you can trust, with who you feel comfortable with and with who you like to work with. There's really no point in working with someone you don't like or who doesn't share similar opinions or views than you do. I have been very privileged to get to work with two amazing physios, one here in Finland that I've known for three years now and one in Canada that took care of me and my knee when I was feeling down and nothing seemed to work!! It has been great and since I feel comfotable with both of them, I've been able to give my 100% every time they've given me an exercise or a rehabilitation program to follow at the gym.

4. DON'T KEEP ALL TO YOURSELF
I am a person who likes to keep their own thoughts and feelings for themselves as long as possible, but even I have noticed that sometimes the mental part of this injury becomes really unbearable and you have to just let it out. I am having difficulties finding people I could talk about my feelings because I'm not the type of person who likes to share their personal feelings especially when they show your vulnerability. BUT, it is of a huge importance to let your own feelings about the whole situation, the rehab process, the roughness of it, out. Because if you keep it to yourself too long, at some point a mental breakdown is possible. I was close to it last year but luckily I got to meet my physio and all the wonderful people in the support group and in Canada.

5. DON'T LET OTHERS DEFINE YOU
You are the one that got injured, you are the one who's suffering from it, you are the one living with your knee. Don't let anyone else define who you are or how good you are based on your knee injury - that's unfair and just rude. You set the limits and you set your goals. We work hard and want to succeed in rehab because we want to get back to the life we had before. In some cases, it might not be possible and we might need to change some things, but we never ever have to deal with people who judge us because we've suffered a knee injury. We also don't have to dealt with getting left out of something because we've had a rough rehabilitation. I've run into people who criticize me and who tell me I'm not good enough to get back to sports because I'll never be the same I was before. Well, it's true I will never be that same person I used to be but let me tell you one thing. I've set myself a goal to get back to sports and what I love doing. If I set myself a goal, I will achieve it and no one will stop me from doing it.

6. ALLOW YOURSELF TO CRY
To begin with, I hate crying. To me crying is like a weakness, showing your fragility and impotency.  I almost never cry really and I hate when someones sees me crying. Because I always think I can handle it myself. But deep inside I know I can't fix it all by myself. So I have learned how to cry. I'm not saying I'm crying for every little setback but sometimes when the pain is bad and the world seems to be collapsing for some reason I allow myself to let the tears flow down my cheeks. I hae begun to think that mayber all, maybe it's a sign of strength, a sign that shows that you care and you want to get better!

7. ENJOY LIFE
Even though knee injuries suck, I have realized we can't just stop ourselves from laughing, smiling, doing things we like, seeing friends and travelling because of a silly knee injury. True, it puts down some limits I'd like to see gone, but when the injury has already happened that's just not possible. There's no going back to the past, but we can look in the future and keep living life as well as we can, enjoying things we still can enjoye and adapt to new kind of situatuons.

8. VALUE WHAT YOU'VE STILL GOT
Knee injury, by necessity, means giving up on certain things. But it doesn't mean we have to give up all we have and all we've done before. After an injury like this, you will certainly have to change some of your habits and think twice before doing something you could do before. But we must remember that life is valuable, and everything we still have is valuable. Giving up on certain things might mean gaining some new things you never would've imagined yourself doing before the injury. So many people in the world suffer from terrible diseases, poverty and undernourishment that we have to remember to consider ouselves lucky to be alive and healthy apart from the knee. We only have one life to live and if we spend it worrying, whining and nagging we can't be happy. At least that's what I think.

9. SMILING AND LAUGHING ARE THE BEST MEDICINE 
On the bad days when the pain is bad it is pretty damn hard to try smiling but trust me, being with friends or family and laugh is really a good medicine, especially mentally. This injury is so much more than only the physical part - there's also the mental suffering that sometimes is even worse than the phsyical one. So whenever and wherever you can, try to take a poisitive outlook to life and smile at it. Despite the knee injury and the bad days, there are always brighter days ahead of us in the future and even the one with a bad luck will find something to laugh about eventually.

10. DON'T LOSE FAITH
Being in rehab, it is natural that sometimes it feels like everything seems to go the opposite of what you had hoped. There are days where the knee is so sore that you can't do what your physio asks you. Other days you'll rock it at the gym and you feel great. But those tough days are hard on the mind, they make you feel weak and unsuccessful, useless and pathetic. It is during those times that we have to remember everything happens from a reason and it is always possible to come back from it. And normally those who get up after an injury are much stronger than they were before because the process has taught them so much. Never lose faith and always keep dreaming, because everything is possible when you really work hard for it. 
 

Nothing comes easy

Tomorrow I will be at 7 weeks post-op from my latest reconstruction surgery. Time has gone by fast but still it feels like I ran forever ago.. 7 weeks in a lifetime is a pretty short period of time, but with this injury it is a long, long time.

Nothing with the recovery comes easy; not your first steps in walking, not your first steps in running, not gaining back your range of motion or all the muscles lost in the quad and calf. Why is it so damn hard then? Everything you were so used to doing before your injury seems so hard to attain now, and everything you were able to do back then seems almost impossible to achieve right now. What to do when it feels like your hard work doesn't seem

to pay off; it is so frustrating at times. The physical pain is pretty big, but the mental pain is probably much bigger actually. Lots of thoughts coming and going, thoughts of getting fat, of not being able to fully go back to an active life, of not being able to run or walk normally again, of somebody hitting your knee by accident on the street, of you not being able to handle the recovery road, that something will go wrong... Small thoughts that together make a scary, unpleasant, obnoxious and sometimes discouraging totality. It is very hard to deal with all the emotions you're going through and at the same time try to live a "normal" life at the same time with family and friends. 

The first couple of weeks are mostly bed rest. It really depends on the people but you don't really move much with a full-casted or full-braced leg that has been cut open. The leg must stay elevated almost at all times, it must be iced to get the swelling down, you can't move it. The swelling is pretty bad in the beginning, you don't recognize your leg but you see a giant soccer ball as your knee; yes that's right, it does look pretty abnormal and ugly :D The brace itself is heavy and big and takes a lot of place. Not the nicest outfit but it's not like there is too much of a choice. 

The following weeks involve your first appointments in physiotherapy. At first there's not much you can do. Lifting your leg with your own weight, and...yeah that's pretty much it! I could start bending it just a little later after having mobilized the leg for a little while. The importance of a good physio and a motivating physio is HUGE. Your physio becomes almost like your best friend and you spend a lot of time doing the exercises he/she has given to you. Check-ups with the doctor are also important so that he/she can assure the recovery has started well and the knee feels good. I saw my physio last week and I thought all would be well, my ROM is now about 80 degrees, but he said he is concerned that the ligaments have been put too tight and my knee might lock out to that ROM in the worst scenario. Of course I wasn't quite expecting that but now he put in my mind the idea of a new surgery next spring to repair the ligaments and the things attaching them....I'll have a new check-up in January but for now it doesn't look too promising :( 

I've come to a stage in recovery where my physio has given me the permission to start aqua jogging with a belt. It has been feeling so good, it makes my knee move too and water is a great way to rehabilitate those muscles and ligaments in the knee. I'm hoping to get back on a stationary bike pretty soon after the New Year, but if my knee refuses to bend then that will have to wait. 

Running and being able to do little jumps, kicking a ball, swimming normally and skiing still seem to be very very far away but I keep my head high. There is a lot of reasons I could put my head down and give up, but why would I do that? Why would I sacrifice all the work I've done to quit now, at this point? So no, I don't have the intention to quit. Ever. That's not even a possibility. I have started something I want to finish. I want to get better, I want to get my knee functional again. I want to get my active life back and for that I have to work hard, look at the possibilities rather than the missed opportunities. I have missed out on so many things. I miss the feeling of belonging to a team whether it was for soccer or track&field, I miss it. There's nothing I can do about it, being part of a team is so much than just sharing a similar passion. It's having friends, having fun together, getting so unforgettable memories. 

       

I haven't been able to do the three sports I love the most for years now (soccer, track&field, downhill skiing) and I still have tears running down my cheeks once in a while. For a long time, I hated myself for doing that, crying. But I have understood that it is strength to cry sometimes and it just shows how much you truly love something. I haven't had it easy but I know some have it way harder than me. So every day I think about how lucky I am to still be able to do the things I am able to do now, and how lucky I will be if I get to do the things I love at some point in the future. I don't think that nothing worth fighting for comes easy. You need to hit a few bumps on the road in order to be able to achieve the highs. If it's just flat all the way, then what could you achieve? Maybe I won't be able to those exact same sports ever again, but it doesn't hurt to try. Giving up and not trying hurts more, I know it does. And if it really comes down to not being able to do those things again, the worlds is full of new opportunities and new things to discover. Eyes open and mind positive anything is possible. 

Slow progress is better than no progress: how to deal with this injury

After some painful hours of waiting I was rushed to the nearest hospital to get my knee on its place. I The ambulance ride was a real nightmare, morphine didn't suffice and even though my head was all messed up I could feel the excruciating pain in my lower body and every bump the ambulance hit dislocated my knee more. Finally at the hospital I was put under anesthesia and I woke up 45 minutes later with my knee back straight again. I had been crying a lot, I was angry that it happened to me, I was angry at myself for not having done something differently on the field, I didn't really know what to think.

Pain is the most annoying feeling in the world, the feeling when you are hurt but nothing you do helps to get rid of it. This injury contains a lot of pain, whether it is physical or mental and often they both come at the same time which makes dealing with it even harder.
When my first injury occurred January 2013, I didn't even know that kind of pain existed. You go from feeling good and powerful to someone crying on the with the slightest movements hurting and wishing you were dead instead. I told that to my dad once and he said he'll remember me saying "at that moment, when I was lying on the football field, I wished I was dead" for the rest his life. It might sound funny to wish for death but during those long hours I waited for the ambulance to come ans take me to the nearest hospital every breath I took hurt, my knee was all detached and I was in shock. That was at about 9:30am.























After that procedure I had to be driven back to my home town, we were at 5-hour drive from there so I was on a stretcher and I was put in an ambulance taxi. We arrived at about 10.15pm. At this oint I did not yet know in which condition my knee really was. I thought it had just been badly dislocated, I thought I would come out of it without too much to worry about. What I did not realize was how much that day and that injury would haunt me for the rest of my life, how much my life would change because of what happened.
A day after my injury the doctor came into the room after I had been in an X-ray, an MRI and a CT scan. I saw from his face that something was very wrong and the news broke my heart. I did not expect that one coming at all and despite me trying to be optimistic it felt like the ground I had built my everyday life on, completely collapsed. All the hard work I had done for many years tumbled down in a matter of seconds.

I stayed at the Children's Hospital for a while after which I went back home to wait for my reconstruction surgery. Those two weeks between the injury and the reconstruction surgery are very tough, mentally and physically. You start to go through all that happened, why it all happened, how you have to continue from there, how your every day life has changed. All little things you don't think about when everything is going good. You don't think your life will change suddenly like that. It's very unpredictable. Of course we know sad and regrettable things happen in life but never expect them to happen to us, and when they do, it's a whole new style to adapt to and to accept.

My first reconstruction surgery was done in February 2013. I thought I had endured all the pain possible but I was so wrong...waking up from the surgery the pain was immense, I threw up many times because of how strong all the pain killers were. When the anesthesia drugs started to fade away the pain hit pretty hard. I had prepared myself for the surgery but not enough for the feeling you have after it. I knew surgery was the step in the right direction, but still I could not get over the thought of why I didn't play differently in the game a couple of weeks back. Hospital life is mentally hard, you see tons of sick people around you and it doesn't ease your pain at all. In my case, I was in a room full of middle-aged ladies who complained about everybody and everything they could. It made me want to be stronger than that, I wanted to tough it up better. I got my leg put in a cast a couple of days after the surgery. That too, was something I didn't really expect. They had to start bending my knee to the right kind of angles, which was very painful.

I had strong antibiotics, pain medication and nutrition given intravenously for a while. I didn't eat much at all during my stay at the hospital and that is why I was pretty weak when I finally got to go back home. Because of an increased risk of embolism I have had to learn how to stab myself to the stomach with an injection.

Since the day I got home my life has included many hours spent with physiotherapists, lots of hospital and doctor visits, plenty of self-employed workouts and exercises done. A lot of tears, many bad days, a lot of rewarding moments, a lot of sweat and calories burnt at the gym and doing rehab. My knee has looked ugly, it has been swollen, it's been bleeding, it has had nasty bruises, pretty much everything. This injury definitely changes your life. You have to learn how to cope with your new reality, how to deal with the issues differently, how to change the way you exercise, the way you treat your body. With a knee like this we have to learn to recognize the pain, we have to be willing to slow down a little bit sometimes and push harder when the knee feels better again. We have to work so hard, endure so much pain in order to obtain a couple of days with no pain. For me this was very hard to accept, very hard to deal with. It was so frustrating when everyone else could run outside and lift weights when I could barely bend my leg 10 degrees. After four weeks with a cast and no weight-bearing or bending the knee at all I got my ACL/PCL-brace. That was a big milestone for me, it feels so insignificant, but at the same time it was something huge: I could start working my way to walking and bending my knee little by little. It wasn't much progress but at least it was something. After 4 months on crutches I was finally able to walk again, and man did it feel good!!


This process is very slow, I wasn't even close to being healed when I injured myself again in November 2014. I was back on crutches for 2 months. The doctors knew the same knee was badly damaged again and it wouldn't be possible to do sports before the surgery. But I was abroad and could not be operated before next summer at least. I was devastated and shocked, how could I go through this again....But I decided almost right away that I would keep my knee in the best shape possible before my next reconstruction (done a year later, November 2015). I started running, swimming, going to the gym, everything I was able to do with the restricted range of motion and limited exercises. My knee felt like almost normal, it kept popping out and would do horrible sounds from time to time but nothing I couldn't handle. When I arrived back home my surgery was booked for the end of August, but I found out in the beginning of September that my surgeon had quit the hospital he was supposed to operate me in. Another setback, just like that...I started to feel like I couldn't handle much delay anymore, my knee started to feel really loose and it popped out more often. We found a new surgeon who told me I basically had nothing supporting my knee anymore. I wasn't quite expecting my knee to be in that bad of a shape but I knew I had worked up muscles around the knee so they were keeping it together. Two days before my reconstruction I ran 57 km with a totally crappy knee. I wanted to run for the last time before the surgery. It might have not been the wisest decision, but you never know what future brings to you. How do I know if I'll ever be able to run again?

Every little bit of progress is better than no progress. Hold on to that, never quit. Together we are stronger! Even though life may have totally changed due to this injury, there's always a way to figure things out, there's always something you can do, there's always something good even in the darkest days. I have decided that I do not need this to be easy, but I need it to be possible; it drives me to keep pushing even on the days I do not see any progress because I know that one day I will see what I have accomplished.

The rehab process: Expectations vs. Reality

After my newest reconstruction done this week (Tuesday 10.11) I've been thinking of what I could write about. I soon made up my mind and decided to write on the rehab process, probably the most important individual thing after an injury like this.
Before my first knee reconstruction done in February 2013, I saw my surgeon. I knew I had completely tore my ACL, PCL and MCLs and all my tendons and nerves had been injured. Even though I had the verdict clearly on paper like that, what did it actually mean? What kind of recovery would it require? When my doctor told me I'd be out between 8-12 months, I was SHOCKED. It felt like my life was torn apart, I cried and cried and wanted to be alone. At that moment it felt like forever, but now I can honestly say that wouldn't have been that long. A year goes by this fast..just clapping your fingers. I would've done so much to have that 8-12 months of recovery time. 




EXPECTATIONS:
I had never heard of ACL-injuries before mine happened, I had no idea what it would be like. And I mean it, literally, no idea! I thought the rehab process would be nice and easy following your pt's advice and exercises to strengthen your muscles. I thought every day would be better than the previous one and after the surgery there would be no pain. I thought the rehab process would've gone straight forward and that my knee would feel normal at the very latest after those 12 months, but how wrong was I when I thought that.....

REALITY:
Recovering from a multiligament injury is so much more than 12 months, it's so much more than doing only the exercises your pt gives you, and it's anything but nice and easy.
Since I'm only 3 days post op on my newest multiligament surgery I'm gonna tell about my previous surgery and its rehab process. I saw my physio for a total of 36 times, I worked out on my own time, after school, with my pt, pushed hard to get back to normal everyday life, which hasn´'t really come true.


After my surgery I had a full length cast from my toes to my hip for five weeks. Leg strengthening exercises had to be started right after the surgery and I found myself lifting my leg in the cast 4 times a day for 20 minutes at a time. Wasn't much of an exercise, but it was something - it was a start. Following the cast I had a full-length brace in my leg for 4 months, that wasn't my life's highlight moment either, but at that time I also started seeing my physio and it brought a new perspective to my rehab process - I had set to myself a goal I wanted to attain, be back to the sports I love! I wish it would've been that easy, but the rehab sure isn't a fairy tale. All the pain meds, the ice packs and a smile that covers the pain are everyday life during recovery.


Seven months after my injury, in August 2013 I had to go through a new surgery, my screws had detached and they were going through my tibia bone and my femural muscle. The pain after that was pretty big, and due to the surgery I lost again the muscle I had regained since the surgery. My rehab contained a lot of bad days in exchange to a couple of good days. It was very frustrating at times but every little improvement and development in my range of motion or amount of muscle was rewarding, and that's what kept me pushing hard.
The mental part of the recovery is probably even harder than the physical one. Lots of bad days, lots of tears, lots of days when it feels like all the work you've done has been worthless. It's very much like a rollercoaster ride with some ups but a lot of downs too. On those bad and painful days we gotta keep remembering ourselves that everything we do is worth it, is gonna pay off at the end, because otherwise those days will bring us too down.

Always remember to keep your heads hell high and stay strong!!