Knee Problems in 2014

I play social netball every Thursday night with a group of mothers for a team called the Drama Queens (DQ). We know each other because our children have all gone to school with one another over the years and we all live locally to one another.

Back in 2014 I was umpiring the Mixed comp at The Rise in Maylands when I picked up an extra shift to umpire the Ladies comp on the Thursday night. That’s when I ran into the Drama Queens. The Rise is notorious for it’s rough competition and this ultimately led to the DQ leaving.

At the time I was umpiring at Loftus Rec and encouraged the DQ to move to this center. The center is a lot bigger, has a lot more courts and the competition is graded. So the teams are quite evenly matched. It was at this time I joined the DQ and have been playing with them ever since.

This winter season has been a real grind for our team. We’ve struggled to get enough players every week between work, motherhood duties & illnesses.

A month ago a lady I was playing against deliberately tripped me. I landed heavily on the top of my shin & where the fat pad of the knee is. I can honestly say I’ve never experienced pain like that in my life, it was excruciating. I was up until 1am icing it and contemplating going to the ER to get an xray to see if the bone was broken or cracked. Thankfully the next morning it was just sore so I went to my GP who gave me pain killers and anti inflammatory tablets. Of course I’ve still been running and playing but the pain in my knee hasn’t improved so I got a MRI last week and sure enough I’ve sprained the PCL ligament inside my knee. The PCL sits next to the ACL and it stops the shin bone from moving backwards. So it looks like another two months of rest and rehab. I played last night and it’s painful again today so I might have to try not to play on it for a while too.

Isn’t it funny how people who play sport can just push through injuries, even when they’re quite serious.

Two girls in our team have torn their ACL’s this past month too. Danielle was playing Tuesday night, fell in the last 30 seconds of the Grand Final. Tore her ACL and the meniscus, which means surgery and a year of rehab. Amy got deliberately tripped over two weeks ago and tore her ACL too. She came down last night for our Grand Final and she was telling me she’s going in for surgery next week to reattach it. She’ll be out for a year while she rehabilitates too.

Compared to those two girls I’m quite pleased I won’t need surgery.