Found out why my left side is a little tighter than my right, I’ve no left knee ACL

Dr: “Well, here’s your problem you have no ACL in your left knee”…., me: “what ??!!”

As viewed on the MRI, only small remnants can be seen of this short tendon that helps your knee stay together. A half an inch midsection is completely dissolved and gone. They can tell by looking at the ends that this happened years, possibly decades ago (without me knowing it).

Apparently the more athletic and developed your leg muscles are along with lighter body weight, the less likely a torn ACL injury will affect you. The body and brain may adapt changing your gate slightly to this new handicapped without you actually feeling pain. Yeah this is weird.

Thinking back there may have been two instances in the late 80s early 90s when I did this. I had some impact leg injuries, but they never did MRIs of them, which is the only way to see tendons.

So bottom line my remaining side to side, unbalanced muscle tension is probably not from Lyme disease after all or at least what’s left isn’t.

So my nervous system has been guarding my left knee for quite a while. Which explains why when I had acupuncture just a while ago I felt a huge left side muscle tension release, but then the next few days after my left knee started bothering me .

My knee apparently loses stability when muscles around it are relaxed. So the plan is to get PT for my left leg and knee muscles. They want to try that versus implanting a cadavers ACL, which would take 4 to 6 months to heal. There is now enough data that shows Pro athletes still doing their job with no connected ACL left. If I ever played side to side moving racquet sports, this would’ve been more obvious, I never did that.

Note; I have no bone to bone ware snd both my meniscus looks like a teenagers per two doctors, who looked at this knee MRI, I find that quite amazing considering I’ve not had an ACL for quite a while. Plus I am mid 50s so this was bad luck and good luck simultaneously.

So I posted this just to show that we really have to be 100% dedicated to being our own health detectives. But we also can’t get stuck in the “lyme mindframe” because other things still happen to your body as well.

I have sought out and written about many different nonconventional structural tissue body aches and tension healing techniques. The problem with all these professionals that do this as they specialize in their little pigeonholed area. It took me decades to figure out this mysterious tension tension in my left hip and leg just by piecing together all my experience with the professionals that I had hoped would’ve been able to figure this out, but didn’t.

I still blame many of my other smaller problem areas on the inability for old injuries to heal while I had Lyme at the same time.

That said, when I ripped my ACL, which was probably a couple decades ago, Lyme still may have attributed to this, since my whole body was tight.

I’m not talking about injuries like just falling over or running injuries. I competed in the elite level of what people would call today “extreme sports”, which are very prone to injuries. what I put my body through was pretty tough. For anybody’s body. But I also did this with lingering Lyme. So this is all very complicated to figure out.

Unique story, for me. Had never seen anything like that before.

The meniscus aspect is what really intrigues me for as active as a person as you have been.Maybe, if I am remembering correctly, because you biked much more than ran?

Have had surgery on both meniscus in knees, but the way I ran always put pressure on inside of knees, and too many fast distance runs on pavement. So all I can figure is you have a natural run that does not stress the meniscus, baked a lot more than ran or just biked.

It all makes sense. Keeping muscles around the meniscus strong can make a big difference, as well as running on trails. Unfortunately, when I was racing 800 and 1500, which required putting in miles along with speed, I spent a lot of time on roads because of teaching and coaching. I'd teach all day, then team practice, come home and eat, grade papers (taught English), so would have to fit runs in at 10:00 pm, which meant just jumping on roads. Natural mechanics of knees also played a big part.

It"s amazing you have gotten through with so many years of Lyme and not had more damage. That's awesome.

the braces are pretty cool if you dont plan to get repaired... i tore out my rt acl at 14 and missed it somewhat . you're pretty lucky your only went out once if i do strenuous lifting it'll buckle and meniscus rubs rather painfully ... keep us posted astro

My knee is getting stronger, hope it gets as strong as it was.

I have a great PT, thinks more than any other PT I've ever met. Thinks out of the box. Actually has desire and likes her job!!

None of that useless "cookie cutter PT" thats usually the case with chain PT clinics owned by other healthcare conglomerates.