We were at my teammate’s house in the Chicago suburbs. We had practiced in the morning and then bussed out to her home where all 33 of us changed into our swimsuits chatting on beach towels and playing volleyball in the pool. There were mini soccer goals on the grass and a spikeball net. I was so excited because I LOVE spikeball. I taught a few of my teammates and we started hitting the ball around. We took a break to do a team bonding activity and eat lunch. Afterwards my teammates and I went back out to play some more spikeball. After a few minutes when I was going for a ball, my teammate stepped backwards and hit my knee as it was planted in the ground as I was lunging for the ball. I felt a tweak and immediately stopped and limped off the field. My teammates were concerned and came over to ask me what was wrong. I could only tell them that I thought I had injured my meniscus again.
The rest of the day, my knee swelled up and when I woke up the next day I couldn’t bend it very well. I took some Advil to decrease the swelling and ordered some ice packs off amazon. Then I had to send the dreaded text to my coach telling her that I had injured my meniscus playing spikeball and couldn’t train that day.
I was so eager to get back to play though. I biked the day after and then moved to elliptical two days post-injury. I also went into the pool and did jogging/jumps on the pool. In my excitement I went running on that Monday - a 15-minute run down to the lake and back - probably just about 1.5 miles. Throughout the run, I felt a lot of pressure in my knee and a little bit of pain but ow wanted to play so badly that I kept pushing through even though I’m pretty sure I was limp-running. As expected, later that day my knee was in even more pain and ultimately, I had to take the next 4-5 days easy (just biking and elliptical machine) in order to recover from my over exertion caused by me wanting to run as soon as possible.
I started running for real about a week or so post-injury. I worked my way up from straight running on grass, to light cutting and then some ball work. Over the course of the next two weeks I alternated between running, cutting/agility, and dribbling/passing. I got a lot of touches in by going to the squash courts and hitting the ball against the wall. This was a good way for me to gauge if my meniscus felt good when making firm right inside of the foot passes.
Three weeks later I did my first practice. For that first week, I did a lot of extra jogging before practice to make sure my knee was fully warmed up and I worked my way slowly into noncontact work, contact small sided games, and then full field scrimmages. I was still icing my knee post-practice but overall everything was good. I played entire practices and was able to do team fitness and scrimmage as well.
My meniscus aggravation recovery went from September 12 to October 4. After October 4, everything was normal and I went back to normal training and also extra workouts on the side to build my fitness. While I would feel my knee occasionally, I never did anything that caused it to have pain above a 3/10 and I made sure that I only felt a little discomfort if anything when playing on the field.
From this second recovery, I learned that even if I am super eager to play and get back to the game, taking the right steps and listening to my body is super important. I used to always wait things out for the pain to go away before taking the first step, but for whatever reason this time around I tried to force my recovery to happen faster than was realistic. This ultimately slowed my recovery. For my latest injury, I will continue to journal my symptoms and pain each day so to hold myself accountable so I don’t overexert myself in my rehab.
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