How a Pediatric ACL Tear Didn’t Stop Reylynn
“Rey is just the sweetest kind of soul you'll ever meet. She's athletic, she's book smart, she's just biased, but she's just a really good kid. Rey has been very, always, a very independent girl. She's always kind of figured it out on her own, whether that be from like school or from sports, and she's loved golfing.
She loved dancing, gymnastics. She loves doing all these things that are just keep her active, because she has gone a constant Go, go, go.”
“During the summer, we decided to go to a trampoline park. Rey as active as she is, just took off right away. Had fun. There's a foam pit that she decided to enjoy, and as she was jumping into it, she felt a pop and a little bit of some pain. So she went down, and we went to go see if she was okay.
She said, "My knee, my knee hurts, I felt a pop, and it hurts".
So I took her off to the side, I laid her down and did some tests on her knee. I knew something, something was wrong. I didn't necessarily think ACL at the time. I was thinking more of like meniscus, yeah, I just knew something was off.
So that's when we called Dr. rush.
Dr. Rush said, Come on in. Went and saw him on a Friday Dr. Rush said, let's go ahead and get an MRI first thing Monday morning. Dr. Rush contacted Tim and said, you know, she tore ACL, so we're really, really upset, really bummed about it. As a parent, it's hard to tell your daughter, hey, as active as you are, you know, you're just, it all of a sudden comes to a screeching halt this rough.”
“I am a physical therapist, and I do explain injuries to kids all the time, but it was just different when she's also your daughter. But what I would say is that just getting that kind of outside view from Dr. Rush and telling her the process of what happened to her knee and what's what we're gonna do now was way more comforting to her. I feel like, because just hearing from an outside source, that kind of calmed her down a little bit, knowing that it's, you know, it's all gonna be okay. There's just a process that has to be done now.
He kind of was like, hey, look, this is what it is, you know, explain everything to her, showed her pictures, got on her level. Just his bedside manner was just fantastic, and really explained just everything to her. Up until the surgery, she was pretty nervous, but Dr. Rush got us in quickly and got the surgery scheduled fairly within the week. Got us in. She was really nervous going in, but he visited her before and said, Hey, we got this. Couple more questions from her. And in she went.
After that, she just started right away on her post op and PT with Tim, and really just got back to being herself as soon as possible. She gets out of surgery. You see the brace, you see the bandages. You see the stitches. It killed a mom to see her baby cry. You know, hurt, but I knew it was important to start getting that knee bending and straightening as much as possible, as quick as possible. And her and Tim just really killed it with the PT. And she really kicked butt for the for the therapy part of it. And she's doing amazing.
I like to remind her all the time that, because in the very beginning it was rough, you know, doing her exercises and mobile, you know, doing her mobilizations and stuff like that. It was tough. But I like to remind her every once in a while, be like, look what you're doing now, you know, and this is where we started, and she's doing great. She has a great swing. I don't see any kind of issues right now with her, running with her, you know, jumping, all that stuff. Yeah, so she's back to being a full-on kid now.”