Hi!
My name is Becca, I'm a 15 year old sophomore. I got MPFL reconstruction surgery 4 weeks ago, Friday. This was the outcome of a vey long journey. I supplexed my knee cap in April of 2013 during softball, I had bunted and was sprinting to first base, I hit he base wrong and pivoted to the right, all I hear was a loud pop and I started to go down. We went to the doctors to later on discover that I had supplexed my patella. Luckily it went in on its own, but on the way in it had banged into my femur so I had bone bruising on both my patella and femur. I was bummed, sure, but softball wasn't the favorite sport I play so it wasn't the end of  the world.  I was placed in a leg long brace that was locked at zero degrees and I was non weight bearing on crutches for almost two months. I was in he brace for such a long period of time due to the enormous amount of swelling in my knee, after getting an MRI they found out nothing was wrong so they let me start bending my leg and put special  tape on my leg to help the swelling go down. It worked and before I knew it I was out of my brace and allowed to start running and excersizing. It was summertime and I had a lot of time on my hands, so along with going to physical therapy two times a week, I ran every single day. I built up my endurance and got in shape for my favorite sport, field hockey. I was feeling great, in shape and not worrying about my knee, but, my patella still was a little unstable to the gave me a brace. I went to a field hockey camp and it worked great! I had no problems.  August 21st, I was released from physical therapy and the doctors. My first field hockey try-out was on the 30th of August. I was doing really well and was even moved up and playing with all of the varsity players. We were doing one on ones and I planted my foot and twisted to get the ball when I heard a POP and crunch. I immediately collapsed and broke down. I was devastated because I was almost positive I had supplexed my patella again. I was in hysterics for the entire day. If someone mentioned it, the tears would start flowing again. We saw my doctor again and he thought it might have been a torn meniscus  and I was actually really happy. The recovery time is a lot quicker and I could possibly get back to f hockey. I went in for an MRI the next day and the day after we saw him again. He pulled up the pictures and told me I had re-dislocated my knee cap. That's when the hysterics had started up again. It only got worse when he told me I had some pretty bad cartilage damage and that since the soft tissue didn't hold on my MPFL that it was pretty much definite I was going to need surgery.

After that doctors appointment we went o a follow up at UConn and the doctor there mentioned MPFL and AMZ. We never heard of that before so, we went to my doctor and asked him about it. I had several risk factors in my knees for my patella to dislocate. One being that I was 19 degrees knock kneed. The liked to perform AMZ when someone is 21 degrees knock kneed or higher. So I was right in the gray area. I was silently flipping out. In an AMZ operation they cut your leg bones and move them over and pin them in place, as well I would get an MPFL. I was almost going to get the AMZ when he told me that he's never had someone need an AMZ after getting MPFL. So that's what I went with.

Okay so that's my back story and the deliberation and finding out what was wrong with it happened in about 2-3 weeks in September.
-becca