I have many plans for my CAS journey, including completing the activities section of the requirements. However, I have a knee injury that I sustained while skiing during the winter holiday in grade 10 (Dec 2019- Jan 2020). Since then, I’ve had numerous treatments done including acupuncture and plasma injections to try to easy or even remove the pain but so far these solutions have been temporary.
In late December of 2020, I decided to change doctors to get another opinion as all of the temporary solutions never took away the pain. This new doctor informed me that I have a detached meniscus, therefore needing surgery.
My surgery was in January of 2021 and the recovery period was estimated to be about a month and a half – two months. The doctor recommended AGAINST physio as in this case, it would affect my recovery.
Unfortunately, once the expected recovery time had passed, something still felt wrong with my knee, and I was still having a lot of pain, possibly worse than before. Therefore, this made it difficult for me to participate in athletic activities.
In grade 11 I tried joining the softball preseason team. however, since I was just fresh out of my first surgery, I didn’t get to do much more than passing drills and I wasn’t allowed to participate in games. This really discouraged me so I ended up turning away from the softball team.
For the months following my first surgery, I spent a lot of time cycling, as it seemed to be the least painful physical activity I could do.
Near the end of 2021, I was introduced to pilates, and my instructor was kind enough to adapt my sessions in order to not hurt my knee. Along with pilates, I participated in the yoga activity offered at school.
However, just as I was starting these activities and gaining experiences from them, I decided to go back to see the doctor and tell him that my knee was still hurting. In January of 2022, he informed me that I have a Plica in my knee. A plica is a fold in the membrane that protects your knee joint. This needed to be surgically removed and I got the surgery in February of 2022.
Whilst other aspects of my CAS experience went smoothly, this knee injury has had a big impact on the activity portion of it. However, this has been an experience in itself, in which I’ve grown in different ways.