We've always tried to believe that things happen for a reason, and have tried to teach our kids not to ever ask "why me?" But, in this case, I'm the one asking, why Tyleigh?
If the first ACL tear wasn't hard enough, Tyleigh tore the same ACL again. After 10 months of excruciating pain and hard work, she was getting ready to make her big comeback. She and Rod went out into the field across the street from our house to do some of her physical therapy exercises. I took the dogs for a walk up in the hills. I'll never be able to erase the scene I walked into when I got home.
Tyleigh and Rod were both in tears. She had squatted down to do a jump squat and both felt and heard that familiar and awful pop. We were all sick. We tried so hard to convince ourselves that we were just being paranoid and that there was no way it had torn.
A few phone calls later, a doctor's appointment and another MRI, it was confirmed that her same ACL had torn again.
Devastation is an inadequate word and emotion.
Surgery was scheduled with the same surgeon as before, and on June 17, 2019, at only 14 years old, Tyleigh had her second ACL repair. This time, they used her patellar tendon to repair it. Dr. Carslon did a BPTP graft (bone-patellar tendon-bone). The pain was almost unbearable for her. Same as before, there were major bone contusions, a sprained MCL, and slightly torn meniscus in addition to the ACL tear. We still have no answers as to why it tore again. The only theory we can settle on is that the donor graft from the first repair never adequately took and established blood flow.
Her cute coach and teammates were cheering her on and posted this message!
We decided to get two dogs last November - and I wasn't sure if they would jump on Ty since they are still technically puppies (albeit huge puppies), so we had to "fence" her in. They were super worried about her and stayed as close to her as they could get.
All the incisions in this girl's knee just break my heart.
As if the pain wasn't bad enough, she got a major rash - we aren't sure if it was from antibiotics or the brace, but it just added to the misery.
The bruising really started coming out a few days after surgery.
Still the strongest kid I know.
