Matthew Leuenberger Den Diary

As most of you may already know, things haven’t exactly gone to plan since I underwent surgery to repair the lateral meniscus after I injured me left knee in our match against the Swans back in Round 3.

The injury ruled me out for three months and has been a nuisance ever since.

After the initial operation, I started to feel a bit sick and my knee swelled up pretty badly. I just figured that was part of the after-effects of that type of surgery, so I decided to head back home to Perth where I could spend some time with my family while I recovered.

It wasn’t until I arrived in Perth that it really hit me. I became violently ill and my knee ached.

I was rushed back to hospital in Perth and discovered that I had a post-operation staphylococcus infection. The doctors basically put drains in my knee and flushed out the infection with saline to try and fix the problem.

After spending nine more days in hospital, I was eventually allowed to head back home to stay with my parents – but not without a 24-hour IV drip and plenty of oral antibiotics.

The infection left me with very little appetite and I ended up losing around 11kg. I finished up weighing around 93kg – which was the same weight I was back in 2006 when I first came to the Club.

I have since been pretty much under house arrest and carried a 24-hour IV drip around everywhere I go for a month. The drip had to be on me constantly in a bumbag which quickly became a regular part of my regular attire. Thankfully my blood tests have shown dramatic improvement over the past couple of weeks.

The hardest part for me was trying to put on the weight that I had lost. I’ve certainly become conscious of eating more than I probably need to and over indulging at times in an attempt to put on extra kilos. I have even been trying to eat extra meals between breakfast, lunch and dinner.

Mum has been great in helping look after me and cook some of my favourites, but I reckon I must have emptied her fridge out by now.

I developed a pretty strong training base throughout the pre-season, so the Club’s hoping the weight will come back pretty easy – particularly once I get stuck back into those leg weights.

The good news is that my microbiologist only yesterday gave me the all-clear to travel so I have booked a flight back on Friday.

I’ll probably go back to Brisbane via Melbourne so that I can watch the boys play North Melbourne on Saturday afternoon at Etihad Stadium.