I was then taken to the University Health Service at the Tang Center in a wheelchair, where I waited for an hour and a half in Urgent Care. I'd hate to see the wait if you DIDN'T have an emergency. :) The other thing I remember was that the person who wheeled me around wasn't adept at steering a wheelchair. She bumped my leg into a few walls and didn't even say sorry! The doctor and registered nurse on duty could not tell immediately if it was a tear or a bad bruise. But since I told them I heard a crack or popping noise, they told me to see an orthopedic doctor. This doctor took a look at my leg, checked to see for too much movement, and then told me I probably tore my ACL. He said that hearing a pop while landing and then having the knee swell up is a good sign of a torn ACL. He also said that I should get a Magnetic Resonance Image (MRI) done to make sure.

After getting the insurance wheel of bureaucracy moving, I had my MRI done a month later. I was taken to a room with a large contraption that had a space big enough for a person to lay down in it. The whole procedure took about twenty minutes. I am not exactly sure how the MRI works, but I know it has to do with the a magnetic field created by the MRI machine, which does something to the hydrogen atoms in a person's body and their magnetic moments which is then picked up and an image can be made. The MRI revealed I had completely torn my ACL and would need surgery to repair it.

The orthopedic surgeon informed me of the different procedures that were being done to reconstruct the ACL. One of the common ones is taking a graft of your own pattella tendon and using that to replace the ACL (this is what Jerry Rice of the San Francisco 49ers had done). The other one is to graft a tendon from your hamstring called the semitendonosis and using that as the new ACL. My surgeon also informed me that the latter procedure can also be done by taking the graft from a cadaver. He said he doesn't do the patella tendon graft, since the recovery is longer and can be more painful. Out of the other two, he recommended the graft from the cadaver, since the incision in the knee is smaller, the procedure takes a shorter time, and it doesn't interfere with your own hamstring which makes recovery faster. I decided on doing the cadaver graft (I think it's called an allo graft). Since I was in the middle of my semester at school, I decided to wait until after finals to get it done. So, for the last two months of the semester, I walked around on crutches, which isn't very cool on a campus like Berkeley. Luckily my brother could drive me around, so it wasn't that bad.

At 10am on December 18, 1997, my dad took me to Alta Bates Hospital in Berkeley for the surgery. I filled out some forms, had my blood pressure and other stuff taken, and then waited around for an hour or so. When they called my name, I was taken downstairs, where I changed into a hospital gown that you've all seen on TV. You know, the ones that are open in the back... but they gave me a robe, so I wouldn't expose my backside :) Then I laid on a bed for awhile where an anesthesiologist gave me something to calm me down. Then I was wheeled into the operating room. It was a small room filled with a lot of medical equipment. As soon as the surgeon walked in, I was given the general anesthesia. I woke up a few hours later in a different room. When I woke up, I was in a dream-like state. I didn't know where I was or what I was doing there. As soon as I was awake enough to realize where I was, I started shivering, so a nurse came over and put a warm blanket on me. I was then wheeled to a different room, where a nurse gave me some crackers and apple juice. I slept for a bit, and then was wheeled back upstairs around 7pm where my dad was and he drove me back home to Sacramento. For a week, I couldn't do much except sleep and watch TV, so that's what I did. :) For that week, I was taking a pain killer called viccodin, since I was very uncomfortable. But 95% of the pain went away after that week. After another two weeks, I was walking without crutches.

March, 1998: The story is an ongoing story. I started doing physical therapy two weeks after surgery in Sacramento, then continued for another few weeks in Berkeley. The excercises were ones that helped to regain strength in my leg. My therapy finished two months after the surgery, which isn't a long enough time. But thanks to health care, that's all I get. I will have to do the excercises like lifting weights and riding a bike on my own for at least another six months. Right now I can't bend or extend my knee all the way, so I can't run. I probably won't be able to for another month. Right now I should be able to jog on soft surfaces and try some lateral movements and maybe even shoot baskets without jumping. I won't be back to normal for almost a year if I keep up with my therapy by myself. So, I will see what I am made of in the next year.

April 20th, 1998: Well, it is now more than a month later. I have been trying to go work out three times a week, but my average has been one or two times. But I have been riding my bike to class everyday, so that helps. As for the condition of my knee, it feels pretty good, but it still feels tight. The only time I feel any pain is when I do leg curls, and that's only on the spot of the incision, not in the knee. But besides that, my knee feels the best after a workout. I feel that I can jump and even run a little bit, but I haven't tried, because I don't want to rush back too soon. I can now see that this will really take a long time, so I don't want to screw anything up by trying to move too fast.

May 18, 1998: I am still trying to go workout three times a week, but it doesn't happen every week. The biggest thing that has happened since I injured my knee is that I have gained a lot of weight since. Hopefully when school is out, I will go work out more and fix that up a little. :) As for my knee, it feels worse than last time, because I was dumb and tried to run a little bit on my knee one day. My knee started to hurt a bit, so I started shifting my weight over to the other knee while walking, so now my OTHER knee hurts! But I think my bad knee is getting over my running, so hopefully I'll start walking straight again.

June 28, 1998: For the last three weeks, I have been working out four days a week. But, I hadn't worked out for a month before that, so I my knee was really out of it. I am not sure if anything is getting better, but at least things aren't getting worse. But things don't feel bad right now, so that's a good sign. Hopefully I will be able to keep working out for the rest of the summer, and then continue at school.

August 1, 1998: My knee is actually feeling good now! It doesn't hurt after walking up and down stairs and it isn't swelling up. It still feels tight, but I haven't stretched out my leg, lifted weights, or ridden the stationary bike in the last two weeks. I am not anywhere near running without pain, but things are looking good.

October 17, 1998: I just saw my doctor, and he says that I can start playing sports now as long as I wear a knee brace. So I got fitted for a knee brace and will be soon trying it on to see how it fits. For the next three months, I will have to wear the brace whenever I play any sports. I think I will have to go down to the RSF sometime and start getting back into playing some basketball. I know I won't be able to play full court basketball for awhile, because my legs are not in any sort of running shape. Hopefully I will find the time to go down there and get back into the game. As for pain, my right knee doesn't hurt most of the time, but my left knee (the "good" knee) gives me trouble. I hope I haven't messed it up...

December 6, 1998: I have my knee brace now, but I have not used it yet, since I have not had much free time. In about two weeks, it will have been one year since I had the surgery. My knee doesn't hurt so much anymore, but I haven't been doing anything to keep my knee in shape, so when I start playing sports again after the semester is over, I have a feeling I will need to get back into really slowly. Actually, my legs feel really tense all of the time, so I hope everything will go back to normal once I start working out regularly again.

January 12, 1999: It has now been more than a year since my knee surgery and my knee is not "normal" yet. Most of it probably has to do with me not exercising it much in the last four or five months, so I will go back to doing that once school starts again. I tried to play some basketball one day with my knee brace, but jump shots hurt a lot when I started the jump. My knee hurt for about a week afterwards, but I guess I have to keep at it to strengthen it and get it back into basketball shape. I will start with some jogging and then move up from there I guess... When I go back to Berkeley, I will go see my doctor and see what he has to say.

February 26, 1999: Since the last update, there has been a lot of progress with my knee. When I got back to school, I started jogging around the basketball courts while wearing my knee brace. The running caused no pain, so I was pretty happy. So, for about a month, I would go and run when I had the time as well as lift weights to gain the strength back in my leg.
A couple days ago, I saw my doctor, and he said my ACL is 100% and as strong or stronger than it was before I tore it. He also said I didn't have to wear the knee brace anymore. He also noticed that my right leg is still a lot weaker than the left and that I should work it out at least three times a week. The news about the knee brace made me pretty happy and I celebrated by playing a couple games of basketball (first time since I tore my ACL). I was a little tentative at first, but once I got into the flow of the game, I barely thought about my knee. Now I just need to work on my game again :)

May 30, 1999: Over the last three months, I have been playing a lot of basketball. I have been trying to go three times a week, but sometimes it's only once or twice a week. Since I have beeen running around a lot, both of my knees feel strange and my legs are also tight. The knee I had surgery on doesn't hurt, but sometimes it feels tight and sometimes I hear clicks and pops when walking around. My other knee seems to be in a constant, dull pain. I think it might have to do with compensating and using my good leg for jumping and landing while playing basketball. As a result, I feel awkward when walking or running, like I am not aligned properly and it seems to be affecting my back as well. Things feel better when I spend time warming up and stretching out before I play basketball, so from now on I will spend 20-30 minutes warming up before I play. Even though I have been playing a lot, I still need to work on my game. :)

July 2, 1999: Over the last month, I have been playing basketball a little less. My knees now feel a little better, so I was probably overdoing it before. But I still need to stretch out for awhile when I play, which I never had to do before I hurt my knee. I still feel I am favoring my good knee, but things are slowly feeling normal again. I'm also getting a little better at playing basketball, there are even some occasions where my 3 point shot is falling and I can drive around defenders to the hoop. After playing, my knee doesn't usually hurt, but my muscles feel tight (especially on my good leg).

September 30th, 1999: Well, I still try to play basketball as much as I can... and my knee doesn't hurt while playing. But there are times when my knee just feels strange when I extend all the way. And there's always the feeling like I need to stretch out my leg, especially behind my knee. I've also been trying to lift weights to get the strength back in my leg, but I only have the time to go once a week, so not much progress.

December 24th, 1999: No pain while playing basketball and no pain while walking around or just sitting. I think things have been basically the same for the last few months. Of course, I've barely done any physical activity due to school. But now I am done with school and should have more time for basketball and working out. I'll keep this page updated on how things go when I start working out again.

April 2nd, 2000:I've been playing basketball once or twice a week for the last few months and I have been feeling pretty good. I feel like I can jump as before and my jump shot is coming back around. Once a week I've also been trying to do excercises on my right left by lifting some weights. Leg extensions are very difficult, since I feel like I can't support much weight across my knee, but I can do leg curls without any pain.

September 13th, 2000: There hasn't been much, if any pain, in my knee for a long time. I now do everything that I used to do before, like play lots of basketball or the occaisional game of football. I think that not much will change in the condition of my knee, so I consider this the last update to the ACL log. After nearly 2 years, I consider the surgery a success since I am able to play basketball again, without pain and without fear of hurting my knee.

October 23rd, 2003: I tore the ACL again, in the same knee, while doing the same thing and just had the surgery again.