Hey Tigers, I am Angelica Sanchez, if you didn’t know, I had three surgeries on my leg. It all started in July 2017; I was doing Summer School PE for my sophomore year at Pacheco High. We were doing our daily runs and exercises, running the bleachers and around the track court. I was on my last set of bleachers when I twisted my leg and seemed to have injured it. The next couple of days I was sitting out of all actives. The following week I started participating again because felt like I “healed.” I completed my summer school and then junior year started.

Junior year, I joined basketball in 2017- 2018. Practices started going good, but during one of the practices, I started experimenting pain again. It was worse than before, so I told my mom about my knee, and she scheduled a doctor’s appointment. The doctor scheduled an x-ray and an MRI. The x-ray didn’t show anything, because my leg didn’t break, so they scheduled me a different date for my MRI at Dignity Health Mercy Medical Center in Merced. The MRI showed that something was wrong with my meniscus, and my doctor scheduled an appointment for surgery on February 26th, 2018.

The day of my surgery, I was nervous; they put an IV in my hand as they told me what to expect after surgery.  They put me under anesthesia.   They put two camera’s in my knee cap to see what’s going on inside, and he scraped some of my plica and I had a loose flap from an injury before.  A couple of weeks pass and my knee felt fine and the surgery was successful, or so I thought.

I started having a sharp and painful snapping in my knee, so I had to get another MRI and found out that I was born with extra tendons in my leg that were affecting me. I had that surgery on July 8th to remove the extra tendons and to shave down my plica.  Two weeks went by, and I still felt painful popping, so I told my doctor at the “after surgery check-up.” He seemed a little disappointed and shocked when I told him. So he scheduled another MRI to see what the deal was.

My third surgery involved the doctor shaving more of my plica syndrome and he removed another extra tendon. I was a bit nervous for this surgery because the doctor said, “it’ll be more painful and a longer recovery because I’ll be cutting from the back of the knee.”

Recovery went great though. It’s been two months already and I haven’t experienced any major problems. I’m hoping I don’t need any more surgery!