The Diagnosis

It's a strange feeling to regain consciousness in the middle of this mess:

Next stop, Perth Royal Infirmary for a neck-check, pee test and seven x-rays. At one point I had to sit up for the chest x-ray and was on the verge of passing out again. Got some stitches for me knee and glass removed from everywhere it had got stuck, which was just about everywhere.

I wish my Mum had taken photos of me leaving the hospital. No shoes, jeans and t-shirt cut to shreds and hanging off me and I nearly passed out again, twice. Down jacket all covered in blood, fortunately in one piece as I'd made sure the paramedics didn't cut it off!! Rank.

Woke up the next day, well, to wake up you need sleep, so, waking up may be a loose term for what happened the next day. Anyway, pain was the order of the day, no, sorry, I mean PAIN was the order of the day. Knees, wrists, neck, stomach, ribs, calf muscles, ankles, and left shoulder. Getting out a chair was verging on comical, rock back and forth until momentum is on your side and brace for the pain.

Anyway, enough winging about the pain. The A&E doctors thought I had done no permanent damage to anything, but my right knee felt very unstable. After a quick google, everything was pointing to a torn Posterior Cruciate Ligament, so I went back to A&E to get a second, and third opinion. Verdict: Nothing Wrong, any persistent issues, go to your doc in 6 weeks.

To cut a long, and frankly quite boring story short, lots of doctors got it wrong but I finally got seen by a specialist orthopaedic knee surgeon and had an MRI:

Now, this doesn't mean a lot to me, but apparently there should be a PCL in the circled region, and mine is missing. Not good.

Here is the full report from the MRI specialist:

Complex picture.
1.  High grade PCL tear confirmed.  ACL intact.
2.  Areas of bone bruising as described.
3. With reference to posterolateral corner: definite
posterolateral corner injury involving biceps femoris, LCL,
popliteus tendon and popliteofibular ligament. However most
of these structures appear to have partial tears rather than
complete disruption. Posterolateral corner capsular rupture
with soft tissue oedema.

The outcome of all of this is I need my Posterior Cruciate Ligament and some of the ligaments in the Posterolateral Corner replaced. More on this in the next post.