WELLNESS AUTHOR
Sadie Flynn
TISSUE ISSUES n 5 ways to self-treat scar tissue and increase mobility.
I
had made it almost 25 years of playing organized soccer with nary a knee injury. Then, at 28 years old, during an adult beginner’s league indoor soccer game, I heard every soccer player’s worst nightmare: Snap! Pop! 🎶🎵 In the arms of an angel, fly away from here… Despite avoiding major injury during my more competitive years, it was a sprint to beat a 40-something dude sporting a tee with a tech pun across his front to a long ball down the sideline that did me in. As my patella floated around my knee — exactly like Dwight’s stapler in a jello mold — I remember assuming that recovery would be frictionless, painfully unaware that my journey to recover from an ACL and MCL tear would
MAY 2021
be a long and arduous one. I had corrective surgery three months after my injury in January 2017 and spent that entire year rehabilitating my right knee. Three months in, much to my delight, my physical therapist dubbed me graduated. At six months postop, however, I decided to go see my sports therapist/chiropractor as I was still experiencing some pain and stiffness during certain movements, and my flexion and extension were certifiable garbage. After six more months of a cocktail of therapies, my chiropractor encouraged me to request an MRI, as they had suspicions that screw debris leftover from surgery might be what’s causing my progress to come to a screeching halt. Two dubious orthopedic surgeons and one overpriced,
60
radioactive nap later, it was confirmed: there were two pieces of a broken screw floating around in my knee, causing massive amounts of scar tissue to build up around the objects, as well as my incision site. So, at almost one year post-op, I was back under the knife for more correction. From a fitness perspective, the last three years have been frustrating, to say the least. While I’ve almost gotten complete flexion in my knee, I’m still working to release the stifling amounts of scar tissue built up in my right knee.
What even is scar tissue, and why should you give a rip about it?
Scar tissue is the body’s natural response to damage. Cuts, burns, sores and surgical incisions alike
