My first ACL reconstruction took place in 2011. I didn't sleep particularly well the first evening (to be expected) but there was cricket on TV in the small hours, which helped pass the time. There wasn't much pain and I remember the nurses and physio positively encouraging me to make the most of the morphine next day but I really didn't need to. The only weirdness was pins and needles down my leg and in my foot for the first day, which delayed my discharge slightly, but all was good.
I left on crutches the day after surgery: two-weeks non-weight-bearing (as I'd had some meniscus out too), followed by four-weeks partial weight-bearing and then back to no crutches after that.
Once home, I pretty much hibernated in my room for the first week - watching films and learning holiday Spanish (yes really) to relieve the boredom - and watching the pretty impressive bruising working its way down my leg.
I 'slept' with my heel on a pillow for the first week to make sure I got extension back quickly and five sets of physio a day helped break up proceedings. I think I only cried once, out of frustration when doing flexion exercises. It felt like a thankless task when any gains made the set previously seemed to have been completely lost by the start of the next session.
I was also a bit naughty and ignored the advice not to do hamstring exercises for the first two weeks after surgery as I was paranoid I'd never get the movement back.
There's something very strange about lying on your front telling your body to bend your heel towards your rear and nothing at all happening. I now have some idea what it must be like to be a beetle stuck on its back and unable to flip itself over. In the absence of any self-propelled movement, I took a scarf and wrapped it round my ankle, using that to move my leg up and down and remind it what to do, but I doubt I got there any quicker (for the record, the movement began coming back precisely two weeks after surgery so maybe some things do just take a certain amount of time - you've just got to trust it will!)
Weekly physio progressed to fortnightly and onto monthly and, after initially being told off for not icing enough, it all seemed to progress pretty smoothly. Quad sets, cycling, steps ups, proprioception work - my physio kept it varied and 'fun' - and, while it often felt odd at first (e.g. first run / two-footed jumps / single leg hop onto a box), we got there.
I returned to my personal training sessions at the gym after six weeks (following guidelines from physio) and I'm pretty sure that got me back to full fitness quicker than physio
alone would have done. I only had to pay for a few physio sessions once the insurance budget had run out and 12 months later I felt back to where I was pre-surgery. I ran a half marathon in 2012, I had no instability issues and all seemed well with the world.