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L i s te n to T h e A B M P Po d c a s t a t a b m p.co m /p o d c a s t s o r w h e reve r yo u a cce s s yo u r favo r i te p o d c a s t s 31 surgical intervention when fully torn (say the orthopedic surgeons, which I don't like hearing at all). So, to determine the extent of my injury, I start the many-phased process of getting an orthopedic evaluation, which means entering into the complex and agonizingly slow medical-care system. Filled with mostly good intentions and good people, the medical-care system is necessarily very complicated and very careful. It's also frustratingly unadaptable and bureaucratic. So, I try not to think about Franz Kaf ka as I spend a large portion of my day in waiting rooms, meditating instead on the gratitude I feel for the privilege of having such a sophisticated and well-funded system available to me. DAY 4 I continue to be a fascinated observer of my MCL injury's changes. Four days in, the searing pain has diminished quite a bit as the inf lammatory progression starts to move beyond the acute stage. In theory, the nociception-generating cytokines, kinins, and other irritating proteins are much less concentrated in my knee's inf lammatory soup, and the phagocytosis and enzymatic destruction of the damaged tissues is starting to diminish. So, my free nerve endings are less irritated and generating less nociceptive signal; less signal means less pain experience, less pain means I move more, which helps further f lush those irritating proteins out of the sensitized areas. My brain is happy. Speaking of happy, my friendly fibroblasts started working within minutes of the injury, and as the riot of acute inf lammatory processes continues to calm down, those fibroblasts will move into greater prominence. They're helping now with further inf lammatory control, as well as starting new tissue proliferation. More of that to come! DAY 10 My knee is well into the tissue-repair and adaptation phase. I've been an active observer of my body's many recovery processes, gently nudging them along with a sumptuous potluck mix of interventions, including: • Physiotherapy with Adele by Zoom from Israel • Zoga movement with Wojtek Cackowski by recording from Poland (and Jessica Garcia, Zooming in from Puerto Rico) • Gentle hands-on, in-person manual therapy from myself and my wife, Loretta • Weights, bands, machines, and gravity exercises (really not my thing but, hey, I'm working on that) • Bracing, saunas, cupping, taping, collagen, rest, etc. • But, no ice and no nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, no way—at least not in the beginning phase. Swelling is not my adversary; knee pain is minimal (except when I mistreat it, which pain relievers do not prevent); and inflammation's progression is how healing happens. Why would I want to inhibit that? • And in the last couple days, I am finally venturing out for some walks, gradually longer, fully equipped with a super-brace, poles, and ice-crampons for stability on the crusty ice and snow around my house. Then, I rest and "feel"/imagine the gossamer but fibrous mats of new fibroblast-generated tissues being woven into my injured areas, and gradually migrating up and out to form lattices for continued tissue strengthening and repair. Not my knee! The medial collateral ligament complex consisting of the superficial medial collateral ligament (sMCL), deep medial collateral ligament (dMCL), and posterior oblique ligament (POL). Reproduced under the Creative Commons Attribution- NonCommercial- NoDerivs 4.0 License (creativecommons.org/ licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/) from Guenther et al., 2021. 2