ACL Surgery or No Surgery? Important Factors to Consider.

Deciding to get ACL surgery is an extremely, extremely personal decision, and it takes a lot of processing and asking yourself some really honest questions about where you want to go if you are an athlete, if you, you know, how you plan to use your body and all those things. So I wanted to share a little bit in this video about how I came to the decision of ultimately choosing ACL surgery as being the right option for me to go when I had my ACL injury back in 2020. Which it may not be the best decision for everyone, which is why I want to talk about that today. So when I first had my ACL surgery, I actually thought that the only option was to get reconstruction. I didn't know that no surgery was an option too, like that you could have a total non-surgical approach to ACL recovery. It just wasn't even in my head. I've always heard of professional athletes getting their ACLs reconstructed, and that's just what happens, right, when you tear your ACL. So to me, it was news when I heard that that didn't have to be the route that I personally went, and it really gave me some thoughts to chew on. So when I sat down with my doctor and we talked about the results of my MRI and confirmed that my ACL was indeed fully ruptured, um, basically what he suggested, he's like, hey, you're an active person, but let's see what you can do from just doing the rehab process first. Let's just put you in 6 to 10 to maybe 12 weeks of some solid PT and see see how your knee does, see how the stability is, see if you're able to move in the ways that you want to move and to the degree that you want to. Because I wasn't trying to be a professional athlete. Yes, I am an active person, I love to play sports, all those things, but I wasn't trying to make it into like, you know, a professional volleyball league or anything like that. Like, I was pretty happy playing moderate to moderately aggressive levels of volleyball and not going beyond that really. So his suggestion was to start there. He's like, you know, you're gonna have to do some prehab if you decide the surgical route anyways. It's best to strengthen thicken up the knee and get the quad ready to go and get the swelling down before surgery anyway. So there's really no loss to starting with the rehab route and seeing how far you can go. And then he said, hey, if at that point you decide that surgery is going to be the best option because your knee's not feeling great, go for it. So that kind of made me feel like no matter what, I was going the best route in the beginning because either way PT was recommended, um, to help with the swelling, range of motion, strengthening, all that right? So I wasn't really losing out either way. Now obviously from a monetary perspective I was losing out because PT costs money, right? But strategically this made the most sense. Now in the back of my mind I pretty much thought like it was gonna be a, let's say, a 40-60 chance. 40% chance that I would end up being okay without the surgery and 60% of me was like, we're probably gonna end up doing the surgery. And it probably increased as I went through PT and started to actually feel how unstable my knee was. However, I was still staying hopeful that potentially it could turn around for me. But ultimately, once I got to the end of that bout of PT, surgery seems like the best route for me. And there's a few reasons why. Reason number 1: the feeling of instability I still had in my knee was not doing it for me. I wasn't able to do some basic movements, just like side-to-side hops, I wasn't able to just kind of casually move around, uh, you know, in an athletic way, period. Everything felt a little unstable in that leg, and to me that was too much of my brain power going to my knee anytime I was doing any type of movement. I didn't like to have so much focus on it, which leads me into the next reason, is that I didn't feel like I was gonna be able to play the sports that I wanted to, even at a moderate level, without feeling discomfort. You know, the instability was one thing, but I did still have some discomfort in my knee. I felt like the instability was leading to some areas that were creating pain due to that instability, and I just felt like, man, I'm not going to be able to even play like, you know, low-level volleyball at this point or move around in the ways that I want to at all. So it just didn't feel like I was going to get to where I wanted to go. And the last reason as to why I felt getting the surgery was best was that I was still pretty young. I was 29 years old, so I still had a lot of life to live. I still do. I'm only 32 now. It hasn't been that long, but, you know, still had a lot of life to live ahead of me, hopefully, and still had a lot I wanted to do physically. I would love to hike the Pacific Crest Trail. I would love to do some of these like bigger athletic endeavors in my life that maybe aren't on the level of a professional athlete, but are going to require a good amount of stability in my knee. And I don't want to be limited in my future by something that I could fix now. But here's the thing, surgery isn't necessarily out of the question down the road. So if I were to wait even like a couple years, it's not out of the question. It still can be reconstructed. So it's not like I had to make an immediate decision right then and there. But you know, for how quickly I did wanna get recovered and kind of get back to the usual routine of things and get back to my sport, it just made the most sense for me to get that surgery. Sooner than later. Aside from those factors about like how my knee felt and why I decided to go the surgical route, there are other reasons why I felt prepared and ready to go through the ACL surgery, which all of these things are important to think about. One of those things is that I had health insurance. Now it wasn't the best health insurance, I still had to pay quite a bit out of pocket. However, I knew that the entire $40 grand ACL surgery wasn't going to be all on mine to financially, you know, bear that cost. And by the way, that surgery costs different amounts at different places. So don't take that as being like, oh my gosh, if you're an out-of-pocket patient that you're gonna have to pay $40 grand. It differs across the country, across the world, and what they bill insurance isn't usually what they bill you as an individual. So, but I was very fortunate to be in a place where I have health insurance and had health insurance at the time and was able to lean on that to help me with the cost of surgery and the rehab process. So that was one factor that leaned in the favor of getting surgery, um, whereas if I didn't have health insurance, that might be something where I might consider getting it the next year and waiting to get surgery until the next year so that I can have those medical expenses covered. The other thing that was an important factor to consider for me was where I was at financially. I acknowledged that I was going to have to take some time off of my work, off of my business to be able to recover and going to PT takes time, right? Doing your home exercises takes time. So all that takes away from time that you can spend working. I felt like I was in a position where I could take some of that time and allocate some of that energy towards my rehab process. And that's another important thing to consider is what kind of res— time resource do you have available right now? And the last piece I considered was, do I have the mental and emotional capacity to take on the recovery process right now? You know, it is something that takes a lot out of you from an emotional and mental standpoint. It does take building a lot of resilience. There are a lot of challenges that come along the way when you are in that rehab process, and I had to acknowledge that and really understand if I was in the position to be able to do that, which I felt like at that time I was. And I don't regret my decision. I feel like I made the appropriate decision in the right time, and I'm really glad and happy about the strategy that I took to go through the rehab first, see see how my knee felt, see if surgery was really necessary to do the things that I wanted to do, and then move forward and pursue surgery if that wasn't the case, if I didn't feel like things were quite right. I feel like that was the best approach for me. For some people, it might be waiting, you know, if you're not in a good mental or emotional space, if you don't have health insurance accessible, if you don't have a support team around you to take care of you and help drive you to and from appointments, especially if it's on your, your driving leg. You know, all those things you have to consider about the timing of it and if it's the right choice for you. Now, if I was somebody who wasn't active, who wasn't trying to get back to sports, who was okay just doing some things like jogging and swimming and basic things that aren't gonna require a lot of pivoting and quick movements, and maybe it was a little bit older, you know, even if I was a few years older than I am now, I might hesitate on wanting to get surgery. Those things all come into play. So surgery isn't the right choice for everybody. It was the right choice for me. I'm very glad I went through with it. Um, but keep that in mind that it's not the only route that you can go in a non-surgical route, or at least try that route and see how it goes first. So you guys, I hope this breakdown was helpful and just kind of weighing out those options and understanding that there is a non-surgical approach and how you can kind of try that out first. And if it doesn't work, move to a different approach, right? I hope this was helpful. And if you guys liked it, if it was helpful, go ahead and give this video a thumbs up. Subscribe to my channel. I would so, so, so appreciate it. As always, guys, and until next time, I will see you guys later. Bye!