ACL Treatment Options without surgery - A personal journey and learning

A brief introduction of myself. My name is Jackie and i am a badminton player. I have been playing badminton for many years without any major injury. On the 9th July 2018, while i was playing in a badminton competition at a club, my left knee gave way while i was side-stepping from the back of the right hand side of the court to the left hand side of the court to perform a smash.

The pain was intense and it had forced me to retire from the game. Originally, i thought it was just a knee sprain and that the pain will slowly go away within a couple of weeks. I went to see the doctor the next day and the doctor had prescribed some anti-inflammatory pain killer for me to take in order to reduce the inflammation and to return to see him in another week or two.

After about 2 weeks, i noticed that i was still "limping" and that there was still weakness in my left knee. I went back to see the doctor and the doctor had immediately asked me to go for an MRI scan as normal knee sprain should have recovered within 1 to 2 weeks' time.

When the MRI report came out, it showed that i had acutely ruptured my Anterior Cruciate Ligament (ACL) proximally and that i had a partial tear on my Medial Collateral Ligament (MCL). This is possibly the most serious sports injury that i have got thus far. This injury has caused my left knee to be unable to straighten and bend.

Below are the screenshots of the MRI and the report itself:

The doctor then referred me to see a Specialist for better understanding of the treatment options available to me. From the MRI report, he had said that the best option would probably be to get the knee reconstructed via a surgery but he will leave it to the Specialist to provide the recommendations.

My world suddenly fell apart knowing that i may need to have a knee reconstruction surgery to correct my ligament tears. This is one of the major decision that anyone suffering from a ligament tear (be it ACL, MCL or any other ligaments) will need to go through.

To equip me with the knowledge to make the right decision, i have done a lot of reading and research about the ACL treatment options and to see which is the best way that i should decide to go for. For sure, i am not keen to go through the knee-reconstruction surgery. If this is entirely up to me, i would leave this as the last option if there were no other options that can help me regain my physical mobility.

The first alternative treatment option that i tried was the Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM). TCM has many ways of treating sports injury e.g. Acupuncture, Cupping, Remedial Massage, Tit Tar etc. The most popular being Acupuncture.

I have found one TCM practitioner that does Acupuncture near my home. After consulting him, he had performed Acupuncture on my injured left knee. Thereafter, i had consulted him for another 2 more times within the next 2 weeks. Strangely, after the Acupuncture, my left foot would be swollen even more and i could not see much improvement on my injury nor the extra mobility that the treatment can help me.

Since the acupuncture therapy was not helping much, i had to make another decision whether to continue with the current acupuncture treatment or to seek another alternative treatment method.
I must confess that dealing with this injury was indeed not easy as one had to not only manage the physical immobility but also to manage the emotional aspect of coping with the restricted mobility.

Personally, i believe in the existence of God and respect all religion. Since i am a Buddhist, i have continued to pray for a solution to heal my left knee injury. When i was praying at the temple one day, i met 2 ladies who introduced me to a "tit tar" or Chinese chiropractor by the name of Peng. Both of them have seen great improvement by this Chinese chiropractor before and recommended me to seek his advice. Since i did not have many other options i had made the decision to make an appointment to consult him.

Peng is a young man and is very knowledgeable with Sports injury. I had described how i got the injury and he had listened very attentively. He had also asked me if i had any other treatment prior to coming to see him. I told him that i had acupuncture therapy earlier. Before i could continue, he had told me that acupuncture is very effective for nerve and muscle related injury but will not be able to help in the treatment of ligament issues He has proceeded to tell me that my leg will get swollen after acupuncture which was exactly what i had experienced. I was amazed that he was able to tell this to me even before i had told him anything. He had also told me that he can possibly help me if my injury was related to bones and ligaments but will not be able to help me if my menisci were damaged. Fortunately for me, from my MRI report, only my ACL and MCL were torn and menisci were both normal and intact.

After feeling the bones on my knee, he had told me that my tibia plateau and the bottom of my femur (hip bone) were misaligned. He further explained that because of this misalignment, i will have difficulty straightening and bending my left knee. Only after these 2 bones were aligned that i can straighten my leg. He then proceeded to correct the position of the tibial plateau to align properly with my femur. I must admit that the process of adjustment was quite painful but was well worth it. After the alignment, i was able to straighten my knee. However, i was still having difficulty bending it.

Peng had advised me to not put on weight on my left knee for about two days as after the alignment of the bones, it is normal for the knee to feel weak. I was on crutches for the next two days. On the second day, i felt that the strength was coming back to my left knee and i was again able to stand and walk without the crutches.

In the second treatment, Peng had helped me to bend my knees to about 90 degrees by slowly stretching my ligaments. Before this second treatment, i could only bend my knees to about 45 degrees. So, this was definitely an improvement to my knee mobility. As usual after the treatment, my left knee felt weak and need to be rested.

Peng had told me that the subsequent treatments will be similar and the objectives were to stretch the ligament so that my knee can bend a little bit more after each session. This was a slow and long process and since the ligament was injured, it had to be handled with care as to not further damage the ligament.

So far i am quite happy with the progress of the recovery of my ACL and MCL tear with this "tit tar" or remedial massage therapy.

Below are my progress of recovery after 85 days and 106 days post injury

As can be seen on the pictures above, my left knee was still a little swollen from the injury. I am continuing to stretch and bend my left knee every night before going to be. A tiny little progress everyday is still a good progress.

My Physiotherapist has also recommended that i do some strength training for my quads e.g. cycling on exercise bike, Step-ups, Wall slides etc.

As of today, at 119 days post injury, i am able to walk up and down the stairs normally. I am still not into jogging, running or jumping yet and hoping to do that soon. At my age (close to half a century old), i am taking things slow in order not to re-injure the knee. Am happy with my decision not to go for the knee reconstruction surgery and the progress of my rehabilitation thus far. I always have a belief that GOD has given us an Amazing body that can heal itself. All we need to do is to assist the healing by providing the right conditions for the healing to take place.