Oct 2012:
I had my first injury to left knee during the zonal semi-finals match with REC (Rajalakshmi college of engineering), happened in our college (College of Engineering, Guindy). One opponent’s knee hit my left knee on the medial side. Immediatley I felt a shock on my nerve and after that I couldn’t continue my play on that match. On the same day, during the warmup for the final match - my left knee collapsed when I try to make a feint to Tamilvanan (who is standing as a defender for me) and took off for a shoot. I couldn’t play the final match, but we won the match confortably. There was good amount of swelling in the knee and I applied ice as suggested by our PT (Balaganesan sir).
Nov 2012:
We had only few weeks left to prepare for the inter zonal match (top 2 teams from all the zones would compete with each other). My knee felt very tender, hence I was trying the manage the practise to the level best I could but I can’t stop play since I was the captain of the college team. I had lot of respect for the captainship of the college team. I am not a star player but love the game a lot. On the second piston movement in the first match during the inter-zonal, my knee again got collapsed due to small push from the centre back player of sona college team. Our team lost the match by 1 goal, Parimal (first year student) played the rest of the match in the place of mine.
Dec 2012:
During the normal practise sessions itself, I got my knee collapsed often. The knee would be swollen for few days, once the swelling is gone, I would go back for play again. Easily I would have done this for more than 10 times during the final year of my college.
Feb 2013:
We conducted a league (Fresher’s league) within the college for the benefit of juniors to pick up the game. During a curical position in the game, I attempted a jump shot from the right back position, while landing my knee I felt something gone terribly wrong in there. I fell down and cried badly!!
Met an ortho specialist who comes for the college health centre. He diagonised it to be a MCL injury and suggested me to wear the strong knee brace, unfortunately there was no brace available in the campus. I was asked to buy that outside, which I didn’t do, to save the money. Initial few days were so horrible that I couldn’t even walk with the usual speed and ofcourse not able to bend my knee.
Nov 2013:
During a day before Diwali, I slipped myself in the steps in front our home in Mayiladuthurai. I couldn’t able to put weight on my knee. Continuous pain for me, but the doc couldn’t able to find any issue with the knee for outside. As a first aid, he put some pain killer injection, the knee came back to normal self in few hours. I didn’t know that this only the beginning of the many occurrance this issue.
One fine day around 7 a.m. in shop floor of RANE TRW steering systems company, I was walking around the assembly line. Accidently, I stepped on to a ball-point pen kind of spring and twisted my knee. Once again I couldn’t able to walk nor able to stand using that knee. I request my colleague to take me to a hospital nearby and took an injection for pain. After few hours, again my knee came back to proper position. I didn’t know that all these are happening because my muscles around the knee were weak, I was hoping for a magic day when these issues would go away from me. Few days later I was in a conversation with another colleague and he told me that he met with a bike accident and damaged his knee ligament too. Using the company insurance on the employees he went through a surger and repaired this ligament. This sounded amazing to me but I was not ready to go through a surgery but I think that my ligaments are not that bad.
May 2014:
I went on a trip to hydearbad with my Manufacturing engineering batch mets (Ramesh, Aniruthan, Hemnath and Viswa). While we were standing infornt of a sugarcane juice shop on the roadside (around afternoon time), I got slipper on the mud and collapsed my knee. We went to a nearby hospital, the ortho specialist there examined my knee and said that my ACL seems to be completed teared, so take a MRI immediately after going to Chennai. This time, the knee didn’t go back to its original position in few hours. I was in continous pain all through that night while we were travelling back to Chennai. Just about to get down from the bus, knee went back back to its original position. On the same day, I went to the Hindu Mission hospital in Tambaram, which is the nearest one from our house. The Doctor gave a request to get an MRI for left knee. The reports came, it was mentioned that my left knee is completely torn. The doctor suggested me to undergo a surgery immediately and recollected what my colleage was saying about his experience after surgery. He told me that he couldn’t even remember which knee was operated because he feels the same on both knee. I thought I would also go to that position if I go through the surgery. Hence, I convinced my parents. For a second opinion, we went to Dr.T.V. Raja and he was also suggesting the same.
I had hamstring graft ACL reconstruction done in Medway hospital. Only after that I came to know the impact of surgey on my body, it requires a lot rehabilition work to put me back to my normalcy.
The pysios that I consulted were not great, all that they were able to help me is that I could do my day-to-day activities on my own. Basically walking and bending my knee to a reasonable extend.
Jun 2014:
I got my admission to DoMS, IIT madras. Infact, I attended the interview, like 20 days after the surgery. I used the facilities in the campus for a reasonable extend. Some level of swimming and gyming, which helped me a lot in regaining the knee’s range of motion.
Unfortunately, I had one hit in my knee while I sitting in the back, when Kailash was riding the bicycle. I took the x-ray and the doc said that nothing to worry.
Jan 2015:
After the new year party, all the research scholars went to beach on the Jan 1 morning. All of us jumped on the beach sand to take pic, again I twisted my knee when I landed my knee on a hole on the sand. Once again I went to the doc and he said that nothing major to worry about and asked me to do more strengthening exercise. But the pysios couldn’t able to guide through a program which is good enough to strength my knee.
8 years of journey after that! Things that helped me to regain the strength are: