Season of the Knee
Season of the Knee
David Edwards
UP FRONT
WIVES AND GIRLFRIENDS, AN APOLOGY is due. You were right all along. There is such a thing as Speed Channel overdose. A “Monster Garage” marathon may indeed be too much of a good thing. And, yep, that walrus-looking father on “American Chopper” really should have a spanner shoved where the sun don’t shine.
Remote control in hand, I came to this enlightenment over the long Thanksgiving holiday, bed-ridden after knee surgery-or maybe it was the pain-killing Percocets kicking in.
The knee is a complex, amazing joint, the largest in the human body, made up of bones, muscles, ligaments, cartilages and tendons all working in concert. It does not do well, however, when asked to suddenly support 450 pounds of sideways-falling dirtbike and rider, as I found out a decade ago in the Mojave Desert. Likewise, it is extremely unfond of ATV crashes in which the rider’s boot gets caught up in the handlebar while the machine cartwheels the other way, a hard lesson I learned one day at the old Ascot speedway track.
Popping a knee results in immediate, eye-watering pain that could be used to persuade Middle East terrorists to spill their guts, were it not for a little something called the Geneva Convention. By contrast, the collarbone I once snapped was little more than a paper cut. Thankfully, the ordeal is short-lived, followed by swelling and a pronounced limp.
After a few weeks, the shuffling gait goes away and the body adapts. But some recent events convinced me to see a doctor. First, much to my English cocker Ned’s dismay, we had to give up canine-agility classes (think supercross for dogs) because the knee was getting tweaked every other week. Then, on a dual-sport ride in California’s Sierra Nevadas, I spent three days aboard a Suzuki DR650 riding like an old woman-my left boot might as well have been welded to the footpeg, so afraid was I of snagging one of trail riding’s “Three R’s” (rocks, roots, ruts). Finally, Off-Road Editor Jimmy Lewis, also with a bum knee, went under the knife. The operation, a complete anterior-cruciate reconstruction performed by sports-medicine specialist Dr. William Schobert, went extremely well. Jimmy was off crutches within a week and after a couple months of physical therapy proclaimed the knee better than new. “What are ya waitin’ for,” he chided.
I made the phone call, hoping something less drastic, maybe a little pinpoint arthroscopy, would put my joint right.
An MRJ showed otherwise. My anterior cruciate ligament was torn, shriveled to almost nothing. Like Jimmy, I would need the works, a full ACL replacement.
Dr. Schobert is exactly the kind of guy you want handling your innards. Experienced, unhurried, competent, to the point and with lots of autographed testimonials on his office walls. He’s worked on triathletes, figure skaters, pro volleyballers, surfers, golfers, skateboarders, snowboarders, bicyclists, skiers and, of course, motocrossers. He’s even treated Travis Pastrana-but, of course, who hasn’t?
He explained that the ACL’s job, along with the posterior (or rearward) cruciate ligament, is to form an X within the knee, connecting thighbone to shinbone and stabilizing the joint. My damaged ACL would be removed. In its place we had two options: 1) an autograft, in which portions of my own patella tendon or hamstring would be “harvested,” or 2) an allograft, usually a donated achilles tendon taken from a cadaver, cut and shaped to fit. Wanting to recover from one procedure, not two, and seeing how quickly Jimmy had bounced back after his allograft, I went with option 2.
The current state of sports medicine makes previous treatments look like something out of the dark ages. Ten years ago, my operation would have required days in the hospital and months in a leg cast, and left me with an ugly zipper of a scar. Today, the surgery is done on an outpatient basis. Pre-op to recovery room, I was done in less than six hours, sent home wearing a lightweight brace, surgical tape holding four small incisions together and but one stitch required for a drain tube. Hooked up to an electric flex machine, I was moving the knee that same afternoon. A week later, I was in physical therapy.
About 100,000 ACL replacements are performed in the U.S. each year. Among those, the world’s best motocrosser, Ricky Carmichael, currently rehabbing following reconstruction, as are French rider Sebastian Tortelli and former champ Ricky Johnson, and last week Kevin Schwantz called to say he’d just had ACL work after hurting his knee riding supermoto. Heck, the First Jogger may be candidate, President Bush recently undergoing MRIs on both knees.
Funny thing about crutches and a brace, they’re almost a litmus test. Motorcyclists (thankfully, most of the crowd I run with) wanted to know how I hurt the knee, details of the operation and how soon before I was back on a bike. Non-riders often gave that guess-you’velearned-your-lesson-now nod. For them, I developed another story: “Championship ballroom dancing. Slipped on someone’s wayward toupee...”
I don’t know much about the man who selflessly donated his tendon and other body parts to medicine so that myself and others might have a better quality of life. He was in his 30s, outwardly healthy, when he suffered one of those “widowmaker” heart attacks-no family history of coronaries, no previous episodes. Odds are, he wasn’t a motorcyclist (only about 3 percent of the U.S. population rides), but now some small part of him will experience the Alps from the saddle of a BMW, feel the rush of plummeting down the Corkscrew at Laguna Seca, balance an 880 Norton while it’s kickstarted to life, operate the suicide clutch of an old Indian bob-job and get a DR650 sideways on a California fireroad.
Clearly, my new knee has a lot of catching up to do, and hours in front of the television are definitely not part of the program. □
