After a debilitating knee injury, Lexie Tural worried she might never play basketball again, but intensive physical therapy at Rusk Rehabilitation helped her get back to the sport she loves.
PHOTO: Marist College
Lexie Tural has been playing basketball since the age of 5, and by the time college came around, her hard work led to a place on the Fordham University women’s basketball team. Her dreams came to a halt when a painful anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) tear sidelined her.
“It was my second week on campus at Fordham, and I felt my knee seize while making a move on the court,” says Lexie. “I started to scream from the pain.”
Lexie had surgery twice—once to repair her torn ACL and later to treat cyclops legion, a painful knee mass that can arise as a complication of ACL reconstructive surgery.
“My leg still wasn’t straightening up,” says Lexie, who decided to change her game plan. “It was at a 20-degree angle, and I couldn’t walk up or down stairs.” She next reached out to her high school basketball coach whose daughter had knee surgery at ٺƵ Hospital—Long Island with Mark G. Grossman, MD, a sports medicine orthopedic surgeon. The coach’s recommendation was to go to Rusk Rehabilitation.
“I’m so happy to have been given a second chance to play.”
—Lexie Tural
Lexie’s father, who was also her personal basketball coach, drove her from the Bronx to Long Island two to three times a week for five months to Rusk Rehabilitation at ٺƵ Ambulatory Care East Meadow where she found another great coach—Scott D. Yerys, PT, program manager and board-certified clinical specialist in orthopedic physical therapy.
“Lexie came to us quite behind in her rehab protocol with significant range of motion (ROM) deficits and weakness at the site of her injury,” says Yerys. “We did some intensive physical therapy to rebuild her strength and to restore her ROM and functional demands to get her back into the sport and daily activities. Her recovery was extraordinary, and she is now playing Division 1 basketball at Marist College.”
“I can’t even express into words how grateful I am to be playing basketball again,” says Lexie. “Thanks to the rehab I received at Rusk Rehabilitation, I’m so happy to have been given a second chance to play.”
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Rosemary Gomez
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