Kicking off the New Year with a “Bang!”

Happy New Year!  I hope your year is off to a better start than mine.  This is how I got down the hill at the end of my last day of skiing for 2025. 

After 43 years of skiing, with hypermobile joints and a love for powder and moguls, I was really very lucky to have made it this far without tearing my ACL.  Alas, this one went out with a bang! (or more a “pop” really)

I absolutely love skiing, especially carving those powder covered bumps, so this moment really hurt to the core.  The physical pain, as excruciating as it was, was nothing compared to the emotional agony of knowing that this could signal the end of my skiing life as I know it.  

I love skiing — probably more than any other outdoor activity I do — but do I love it enough to go through the yet-to-be perfected procedure of ACL reconstruction?  Or do I step back from this love to make more space for my other loves?  Do I settle for the pleasure of simply and gracefully gliding down the green runs, feeling the rhythm of an easy slalom undulating through me from toe to head, as I take in the beauty of the mountains?  Can I be OK with never again getting to bounce like a bunny down freshly buried mogul runs, spraying up champagne powder?

What I do know is that jumping straight into surgery is not the path for me.  Not this time.  Not now.  Every intervention comes with a cost and most are irreversible.  This one would be pretty invasive: removing part of another ligament or tendon (a ligament or tendon that I’m still using) and drilling holes through my femur and tibia to secure it.  And let’s face it: it would be completely elective.  I can still recover from this injury and live a pretty active life without ACL surgery.  I just can’t do many things that would put twisting strain on the knees.

As a Feldenkrais practitioner, I try to first focus on what I CAN do and growing that out.  I’m also comforted in knowing that my Feldenkrais practice has prepared me for this journey, and will continue to inform my recovery.  The awareness through movement (ATM) lessons teach us new ways of functioning and how to listen to and take care of ourselves.  Now that the swelling is way down, I can already feel my ankles and hips (and by proxy my knees) are springier than they were before the accident (which was only 12 days ago).  They’re more ready to respond and adapt to my environment.  My habit of standing on straight knees is gone, and I’ve been sensing a beautiful new coordination between my ankles, knees, and hips every time I bend.  I don’t even have to think about it.  I’m sure that slowing down and the increased awareness that comes with an injury, plus my commitment to doing an ATM lesson every day, have all contributed to the formation of this new habit I can tell serves me better (better than my old habit of less springy knees). 

Today I met with the orthopedic surgeon to have him assess my knee and give me his professional opinion about my prognosis; His job is to assess my symptoms, and relate them to what he sees on the MRI and in the MRI report.  I was hoping to receive some great wisdom about how to heal and cope with this injury from the “expert”, but alas it was a pretty unremarkable visit.  I did receive some new ideas about how to better use my crutches at the stage I’m at👍 And now I will continue down my path of trusting myself and what my body is telling me.  None of it goes against anything he said.  I guess that was my primary intention for this visit: to make sure I wasn’t going off-course with my recovery.

Happy healing!

-Joanne

p.s. the ATM lesson I did today to help with my knee recovery is available to everyone on YouTube.  I highly recommend it for anyone recovering from a knee injury, but not until after the swelling and tenderness has gone down and your doctor has indicated that it’s OK to bend and straighten your knee, lying on your side and back.  I used a small memory foam cushion between my knees (when I was on my side) to relieve the tenderness I’m still experiencing in my medial knee ligament, and a small bolster under my knees (when I was on my back) to relieve the tenderness in the backs of my knees.