The Baby That Changed Everything: A Baby to Heal Their Hearts / The Baby That Changed Her Life / The Surgeon's Baby Secret. Kate Hardy
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‘I’m going to send you for an MRI scan to confirm it,’ she said, ‘but I’m fairly sure you’ve torn your anterior cruciate ligament. I’m afraid you’re going to be out of play for a little while.’
Again, she thought of Jared. He must have had a similar consultation with a doctor at a very similar age.
‘What? But I have to play! I’ve got an important tournament next week,’ Vivienne said, looking horrified. ‘I’ve been training for months. I can’t miss it!’
However bad the girl felt about it, she had to face up to the severity of her injury. She wouldn’t even be able to have a casual knockabout on the court for a while, let alone play an important match on the junior tennis circuit. Not even if her knee was strapped up.
‘Viv, you have to listen to the doctor. She knows what she’s talking about,’ Mr Kaine said. ‘I’m sorry, Dr Randall. You were explaining to us what Vivienne’s done to her knee.’
Bailey drew a couple of diagrams to show Vivienne how the ligaments worked and what had happened to her knee. ‘You have a complete tear of the ligament—it’s the most common type, and I’m afraid it also means you’ve damaged the other ligaments and your cartilage.’
‘Will it take long to fix?’ Vivienne asked. ‘If I miss this tournament, can I play in the next one?’
‘I’m afraid that’s unlikely,’ Bailey said. ‘You’re going to need surgery.’
‘Surgery?’ The girl looked totally shocked. ‘But—but—that means I’ll be out for ages!’
‘The injury won’t heal on its own and unfortunately you can’t just stitch a ligament back together. Vivienne, I’ll need to send you to a specialist surgeon. I know Dr Martyn here quite well, and he’s really good at his job, so I promise you’ll be in the best hands.’ She looked up at Vivienne’s father and gave him a reassuring smile, too. ‘He’ll replace your torn ligament with a tissue graft, which will act as a kind of scaffolding for the new ligament to grow on. You’ll be on crutches for a while afterwards.’
‘Crutches. I can’t play tennis with crutches.’ Vivienne shook her head. ‘This can’t be happening. It just can’t.’
‘Crutches will stop you putting weight on your leg and damaging the structure of your knee further,’ Bailey said. ‘I can also give you a brace to protect your knee and make it more stable. But I’m afraid it’s going to be at least six months until you can play sports again. After the surgery, you’ll need a rehab physiotherapy programme—that means exercises tailored to strengthen your leg muscles and make your knee functional again.’
‘Six months.’ Vivienne closed her eyes. ‘Oh, my God. My life’s over.’
‘Viv, it’s going to take six months for you to get better. I know it feels bad, but it’s not the end of the world. You’ll come back stronger,’ Mr Kaine said.
It was good that her dad was so supportive, Bailey thought. But Vivienne was clearly finding it hard to adjust.
‘If you go back to playing too soon, you might do more damage to your knee and you’ll be out of action for a lot longer,’ Bailey said. ‘The good news is that the way they do surgery today is a lot less invasive. It’s keyhole surgery, so that means you’ll have less pain, you’ll spend less time in hospital and you’ll recover more quickly.’
‘When will the surgeon do it?’ Mr Kaine asked. ‘Today? Tomorrow?’
‘Not straight away,’ Bailey said. ‘We need the inflammation to go down a bit first, or there’s a risk of scar tissue forming inside the joint and you’ll lose part of your range of motion.’
‘And that means I won’t be able to play tennis the way I do now.’ Vivienne bit her lip. ‘Not ever.’
‘Exactly,’ Bailey said. ‘What you do next is going to make the biggest difference. For the next seventy-two hours you need to remember RICE—rest, ice, compression and elevation.’ She talked Vivienne through the treatment protocols.
‘What about a hot-water bottle to help with the pain?’ Mr Kaine asked.
Bailey shook her head. ‘Not for the first three days—and no alcohol, either.’
Vivienne rolled her eyes. ‘Fat chance of that. Dad’s part of the food police. We were told in sixth form that as soon as you’re sixteen you’re allowed a glass of wine with your meal in a restaurant. But Dad won’t let me.’
‘Alcohol slows your reactions and you can’t play tennis with a hangover,’ he said. ‘At least, not well—and I should know because I’ve tried it.’
Bailey smiled at him. He was definitely going to need a sense of humour to help coax Vivienne through the next few months of a total ban from tennis. ‘No running or massage, either,’ she said. ‘But I can give you painkillers—ones that will help reduce the inflammation as well as the pain.’ She looked at Mr Kaine. ‘Are there any allergies I need to know about?’
‘No,’ he confirmed.
‘Good.’
‘Six months,’ Vivienne said again, making it sound like a life sentence.
‘Better to make up a bit of ground in a couple of months,’ Bailey said softly, ‘than to go back too soon, do more damage and then have to spend even more time recovering.’
‘She’s right, love.’ Mr Kaine rested his hand briefly on his daughter’s shoulder. ‘So what happens after the operation?’
‘For the first three weeks the physio will concentrate on increasing the range of motion in the joint but without ripping the graft,’ Bailey said. ‘By week six Vivienne should be able to use a stair-climber or a stationary bike to maintain the range of motion and start strengthening her muscles, and then the plan will be to work to full rehab over the next few months. You need a balance between doing enough to rehabilitate the knee,’ she said gently to Vivienne, ‘but not so much that you damage the surgical repair and make the ligament fail again.’
‘Six months,’ Vivienne said again, looking totally miserable.
‘There are other things you can work on that won’t involve your knee,’ Mr Kaine said cheerfully. ‘Chin up.’
Vivenne just sighed.
Once Bailey had sorted out a compression bandage and painkillers, she said, ‘I’ll see you again in a couple of days and then we’ll see the surgeon. Reception will make an appointment for you. Call me if you’re worried about anything. But we’ll get your knee fixed and you’ll be back to playing tennis again.’
And, some time before their next appointment, there was someone she needed to talk to who might just be able to give her some really, really good advice to help Vivienne cope with the next few months.
She hoped.
THERE WAS NEVER going to be a perfect time to ask Jared, Bailey knew, and she certainly wasn’t going to ring him outside office hours to talk it through with him. But once the next training session with the team was under way and she was seated on the bench next to him, she turned to him.
‘Can I ask you for some professional advice—something that’s a bit personal?’
He looked completely taken aback. ‘Why?’
She’d known before she asked that this was going to be difficult; Jared had never talked to her about his injury. But he was the only one who might be able to help. ‘I have a patient, a teenage female tennis player. She landed awkwardly from hitting a ball.’
‘And?’
‘She,