Knee injury

[LCF]

Anybody here gone through an ACL tear? While you were getting worked up, did you cave dive? How did it go, and what did you find to be your biggest challenges?

I strongly suspect I have either a partial or full ACL rupture from an incident on a dive boat a week ago. I have a cave diving trip (one of the two I manage a year) in April, and don't want to miss out, so I'm trying to figure out if, even if I will eventually need repair, whether I can do a cave diving trip in the meantime without too much misery.

[Webmaster]

Anybody here gone through an ACL tear? While you were getting worked up, did you cave dive? How did it go, and what did you find to be your biggest challenges?

I strongly suspect I have either a partial or full ACL rupture from an incident on a dive boat a week ago. I have a cave diving trip (one of the two I manage a year) in April, and don't want to miss out, so I'm trying to figure out if, even if I will eventually need repair, whether I can do a cave diving trip in the meantime without too much misery.

Ha, join the club. ACL ruptures seem to be a pretty common injury. I dislocated my knee when I was in college, and apparently I also tore my ACL. They didn't catch it, that was back before they were doing MRI's for anything like that regularly.

So I went the next 18 years with a ruptured ACL. When my knees finally got so bad I had to have them scoped they couldn't find my ACL in that knee because it had atrophied so much. There was no point in an ACL reconstruction then because of all the damage that had already occurred by that point.

If you can swim without it aggravating the knee too much I would put a soft brace on it and go dive, but that's me. If you can keep the swelling down and avoid any deco. You don't want a DCS hit on top of that.

[Kelly Jessop]

Anybody here gone through an ACL tear? While you were getting worked up, did you cave dive? How did it go, and what did you find to be your biggest challenges?

I strongly suspect I have either a partial or full ACL rupture from an incident on a dive boat a week ago. I have a cave diving trip (one of the two I manage a year) in April, and don't want to miss out, so I'm trying to figure out if, even if I will eventually need repair, whether I can do a cave diving trip in the meantime without too much misery.

More likely you'll want to get it repaired because you will find it will interfere with your quality of life. Rehab time for an ACL is significant,so I would plan a long duration between trips. Your largest challange of cave diving without having a repair done will be walking up and down slopes,steps,and unlevel ground with gear.

[FW]

I agree it should be checked, but I had a knee injury while inside a "dry" cave, with a 45 minute swim to get out. It hurt to do the frog kick, so I tried flutter, that hurt too. I remembered that Sheck Exley had published a list of a couple dozen propulsion techniques, so I tried them one by one, until I found one that didn't hurt. I ended up using the Shuffle kick (the real one, not the modern misconception).

FWIW, I was the first one out that day

[K Mejean]

I pulled mine running a couple of months ago. Went to the Dr. and she told me that I could dive as long as it didn't cause me any pain. I have had no issue using the frog kick. I have modified it some so I do one large frog followed by several small shuffles and it seems to work just fine for me.

[amphipod06]

Anybody here gone through an ACL tear? While you were getting worked up, did you cave dive? How did it go, and what did you find to be your biggest challenges?

I strongly suspect I have either a partial or full ACL rupture from an incident on a dive boat a week ago. I have a cave diving trip (one of the two I manage a year) in April, and don't want to miss out, so I'm trying to figure out if, even if I will eventually need repair, whether I can do a cave diving trip in the meantime without too much misery.

Take care of your knee first, the caves will still be there when you go back with a fully recovered knee. Why risk making it worse?

Stick with the PT regimen and maybe even do more for faster recovery, the estimates are done on lazy patients, so if you work at it it should be quicker.

Dive safe,

Celia

PS I tore my L memiscus in Hawai'i in Kona, while starting a dive in Honaunau Bay, I finished the dive 90 min later but there was no way to get out w/o help from Scott, my knee kept giving away even though I could swim just fine...

[scububa]

I didn't have a complete ACL tear, but I had a mess in my right knee that eventually swelled up beyond dealing with it. Between shredded meniscus and ligaments and a large chondral defect, they were in the knee for a long time. My buddy observed the surgery (sports medicine, trainer, therapist). He said there were pieces in there that took a long time to cut up small enough to get out.

Point is that I had the surgery beginning of Nov and started intro class right after Christmas. My physical condition going in was pretty good for my age. Lots of bike riding, a couple of Olympic length tri's a year and a few century rides. I was pretty well ready for the class, physically. Some limited range of motion. I did get a bit of soreness after a few days, but asprin treatable.

Training was at JB. We used boats from Edds and stayed at trailer next door. Couldn't have been a better situation for a tender knee. All I had to do was carry my doubles off/on of the boat to a dolly. Gordon pulled them up the hill and brought em back to the boat. Gearing up, I used the boat nose as my in water 'bench', then fell in the water. So not alot of added wear on the knee beyond the diving. Other than getting my fin off at the end of the days diving, I did fine.

It was almost a year before I was back to 100%. Prognosis was not to continue to distance run, but handball, swimming, diving and cycling should be okay. I am back at handball full speed, but I started out playing like a peg leg priate. Now I have better range of motion in my right than my left knee. Every now and then, after a lot of diving, the left leg is a little stiff and harder to get my fin off and I think about getting my left side cleaned, but I seem to remain on the bubble, not wanting to go thru another year like that unless really necessary. (Insert peg leg scuba diving priate simile HERE)

[Webmaster]

Definitely get it fixed if your knee is in otherwise good shape. In the meantime there's probably no big reason you can't dive.

Going down stairs and such will be much more unstable than going up, like I said a soft brace is not a bad idea. It helps with the stability a little, just make sure you don't restrict circulation.

ACL reconstruction is major surgery, they have to lay your knee open vs. just arthroscopic 'clean up' where they're pulling out some torn cartilege and such. You will be out of it for MUCH longer with the former.

[Cindy]

Why not go to a MD instead of getting Medical advice off a web page? First make sure it's a tear. They can do surgery on it if needed and give you a estimate of time off. I thought I had torn mine only to find out it was something less fixable but not as serious. It took a good rehab, my chiropractor giving me exercises and a good year for it to be pain free. It's actually better than it was. If you keep diving with a bad injury not knowing what it is or what to do to help your just going to make it worse and prolong your recover. There..from Nurse Cindy....
Either that or just get into Motrin, it will hurt worse the next day.

[BabyDuck]

she's an md. she's just putting off the inevitable. silly lynne, go see your orthopod!