Diagnosed Leg Injury Rehab Log

T-Nation -

I hope that this forum does not become a “____ hurts, what do I do?” forum, in which people never actually talk to doctors. To hopefully remedy this and have a good position, I want to start a thread for a personal injury I’ve had while playing rugby. Here’s the story:

On April 24th, off a mid-field scrum from around our own 30 meter, we win the ball out to the left side. I lined up on the right as the inside center (we split our backs for the scrum). I end up at full speed and catching up to the ball as our wing passed the ball back inside to me and I broke away down the touch line (sideline). About 10 meters out, their fullback came from inside in an attempt to tackle me out of bounds.

He wrapped up on my thighs but wasn’t massive by any means. He was able to pull my knees in however when I resisted the tackle trying to push through. My right knee bowed in and twisted from the force, and did not feel good when I ended up down on the ground.

I ended up with my lower body in touch one way or another, and accidentally touched the ball I had dropped. The other team got the throw, and I hobbled into position, and knew pretty quickly something was wrong, and there was no way I was playing the rest of the game. Luckily, the other team screwed up their line-in throw, I called for a sub, and hobbled out of there. We scored off that play on our line in.

That afternoon, I thought I would be fine, yeah no big deal. I limp out to the post game social, and dinner. I don’t go out that night with my teammates, instead I ice up, and watch some hockey. Next day I end up going “oh fuck I need to get this looked at.” - I go to the local hospital, they put me in a knee immobilizer and on crutches.

The doc diagnoses me with a sprained knee and ankle. The details weren’t important was pretty much the approach he took, and basically I was screwed up and needed to see an orthopedic to get a better diagnosis once the swelling went down and stuff. So I also left the hospital with a script for 800 mg ibprofin.

I spend the next week on crutches, on Ibprofin, and in the immobilizer. I take the immobilizer off when I’m in my room or not crutching off to class or get food. I keep it elevated when I can. (Crutches + immobilizer are sick for getting ladies! - I just tell them I scored the try off the play I got injured during… ;-)) So summary of the week - swelling goes down, I use as much upper body strength as I can for my crutches, and I lose copious points in my activity classes for several reasons (because I got injured playing for the university’s winning-est sports team… awesome.).

So it’s now been a week since I got my immobilizer off and instructed to kill the crutches. I’m back 8 hours away from school and working through rehab. I need to still see another orthopedic and start with a physical therapist probably.

Also, the diagnosis I got from the orthopedic was:
Ankle sprain (said it should heal quickly w/o crutches)
Minor meniscus tear (should not require surgery)
Grade II PCL sprain

In addition - I’m having hip issues. I got no diagnosis on that, as I wasn’t sure of the severity last week. This time I’ll be sure to get an inspection on that too.