Not so great news...

These past couple of weeks have been absolutely crazy and of course it all revolves around my knee. Two weeks ago we played against Sm'Aesch Pfeffingen and lost in four. It was a very important match to win because we are both trying to separate ourselves from the bottom and be in the top five teams of the league. I had many meetings with the coaches, my teammates and the president of the club to figure out what we needed to change in order to be more successful. The good thing was that we had two weeks to prepare for our next game because the top team, Volero had to reschedule.

Practice started out being really good and everyone was working hard. We worked on trying to score in difficult situations, and I think throughout the week we made a lot of improvement. My knee was pretty swollen and hurt at this point which makes it really difficult to move and get low in passing. And of course this is the same knee that had ACL surgery last year. We had a friendly match against Dudingen on Thursday, and my knee was progressively getting more swollen with each practice. I only played in 1 set in order to try to help with the swelling and pain. Friday rolled around, and I was still experiencing a lot of pain and swelling so I just served balls in practice. My knee hadn't gotten this big in quite some time. Saturday was great because we had the day off so I just iced my knee and spent time at home. On Sunday we had two-a-days but the swelling was still pretty big. There is friend of our president who is a knee specialist and they decided to have him check out my knee. I was having a lot of pain on the inside of my knee. He pressed on it a few times, and I told him some of my other symtopms. He then told me that I might have torn my meniscus. That was really hard to hear since my surgery last year had trimed the meniscus.

They decided to have me see our team doctor to get his opinion on the situation. He looked at it and also agreed that it might be the meniscus. At this point, I was pretty upset. No one wants to hear that they might be hurt and having to go through surgery all over again. I was scheduled to have an MRI on Tuesday, and then hear the results of the MRI later that day. I'm really thankful that they would be able to look at it so soon- waiting for results is the worst.

Our team doctor came to practice and looked at the MRI. He said that my meniscus looked good (I breathed a huge sigh of relief!!) but that he noticed some cartilage that looked a bit odd. When I saw him the day before, I wrote out exactly, based on an email, what they did in my surgery for my ACL so he knew exactly what was done. In that first surgery they fixed my ACL, smoothed out some of my meniscus as well as some cartilage. He was concerned that the cartilage just wasn't right so he asked me to send the MRI scans to my old doctor since he knew exactly what happened in the surgery. To be honest, I didn't think much of it.

I practiced a few times this past week and started jumping on Thursday. My swelling had gone down a lot since I hadn't done anything since last Friday, and I was hoping that maybe I just pushed it a bit too much the week before. I didn't hear anything from my U of I doctor until Friday night. He looked at the new MRI and said that in one spot, I had completely worn away all the cartilage and now my two bones were rubbing against each other. He also said that there might be some damage to my tibia bone. I was stunned. I had no clue that this was going on at all. And then the worst news came... He told me that I should stop playing and that I needed to get cartilage restoration surgery. He explained that the bone brusing caused by my ACL accident indicated a severe impact. And that impact on the cartilage killed the repair cells in the cartilage. Thus I have been wearing away the cartilage faster than it could be replaced.

Sometimes I still can't believe that I actually need surgery.... again. I don't think it will really hit me until I'm in the doctors office talking about the different surgery options. I feel ok especially since my knee doesn't feel like its going to give out like it did with my ACL. Everyone who looks at the MRI says my new ACL looks great as well as all the other ligaments but its just that one spot, or pothole as my surgeon likes to call it, that is causing all the pain and swelling.

I had thought about staying here at least until Christmas because we have a lot of important games coming up in the next couple of weeks but my doctor advised against it. If I continued to play on it, it would only get worse. So unfortunately, I have a flight scheduled a week from today to go home. I know in my heart that it's the right thing to do ,but it's still really hard to leave volleyball and my team behind. They have all been supportive in this decision which does make it a little easier. I had such high hopes for coming back and playing again but it seems that its just not my time yet. I had such a great time here with this team, and I'm so thankful that I even got this opportunity to play. I will miss everyone so much, and I'll definitely be cheering for NUC in the states.

This might be one of my last posts although I can't decide if I'm going to post about how my surgery and rehab are going. I just want to give a big Thank You to everyone who has supported me these past couple of years. It's been a very hard time because of my knee but your support has made it a lot easier. Hopefully someday in the future.. I'll be playing profession volleyball again.