The week after surgery

So I decided to go back to work last week...dumb move.

Beside there being way too much to do compressed into the last week before the yearly University two week shut down I had knee surgery three days ago!

I went home at the end of Monday exhausted, and thinking 'only a few more days'. I went home Tuesday exhausted, and thinking 'I have to go back for that installation meeting in the morning'. I came home Wednesday for lunch and fell asleep for three hours.

God knew I was going to try to finish out the week so...on Thursday the University sent everyone home at lunch time because of the impending ice storm.

The ice storm happened but there wasn't any damage in our area and the roads were blessedly clear the next day because Friday I had an appointment at Johnson County Orthopedics to get my sutures out. So we were up early Friday and driving.

If you have never had the opportunity to watch someone pull metal staples out of your skin, it's pretty cool! They have this tool that is shaped like a mini sheet metal crimper that grips the center of the staple and presses it down between two prongs and curls the ends up and out of your skin. I had always wondered how they did that; now I know.

So, I walked into the appointment on crutches, and after the nurse and the doctor were finished with their work the Athletic Trainer came in. He told me to get rid of the crutches and the brace; said didn't need them, at least at home. So I've taken him at his word and it's been great.

The main reason for this blog post is to show you some pictures from the week after surgery...


You can see the three small holes around the knee cap for the orthoscope the meniscus repair, two on the right and one low on the left; the other two holes served multiple purposes: drilling holes in the bone to set the new ACL and getting hamstring tendons for the repair and whatever else, I'm not sure. All in all not very invasive considering what I've seen on others.

My bruising on the other hand is impressive to say the least, so without further adieu:



One of the reasons it's so bad is that they used a tourniquet during surgery to control blood lose.

The long and the short of it is that I'm healing, I'm walking, and I have a couple of weeks of vacation coming up filled with family time and great activities, and may be even some time alone with my sweetheart! I'm not jumping for joy...because it hurts, so I'm sitting with energy.

Merry Christmas.

I had a successful knee surgery on 11 Dec. The doctors fixed my ACL as planned but also fixed my MCL and cleaned up my Meniscus since there was a considerable amount of scar tissue; there was a lot of damage. All things considered the doctor told Amber that my knee would be better than most men's knees till the arthritis starts setting in twenty or so years from now.

Amber waited patiently the whole time amd drove us home afterword. She's wonderful.

Compaired to my previous general anesthetic experience this went very well...no nausia afterword, I was able to eat as soon as we got home without any problems, which was very nice since I had been fasting since the previous days lunch.

Goerge was a trooper the whole time, I think he slept the mjority of the time we were on the road. Uncharactoristically Amber did not have the camera with her so we don't have pictures of the facility, doctors, nurses, and before and after of the leg, I guess you will just have to imagine a really nice facility and lots of great poeple...and of course my beautiful leg with the middle third shaven and then wrapped quite tightly to cover the five little incisions they made to fix it up; hows that for a picture?!

Now a couple of days later I am feeling rather useless on the couch as I have a hard time completing my physical therepy excersizes or getting up to do anything else at all. Yesterday I had my first physical therepy appointment, which though somewhat painful, I thought went rather well. Chad (the therepist) was impressed that I could, the day after surgery, bend my leg more than 90 degrees and straighten it out to 0 degrees. The leg lifts are a little painful but the bending stuff really smarts every now and then.

That's life right now...eat, take pain pill, sleep a little, hold George, change the occational bum (not mine), excersize, eat, pain pill, sleep, repete. I'm going to try to go back to work Monday, I'm not sure how that will go, but I think I'll be glad of something else to do. We only have another week before the university shuts down for a couple of weeks for Christmas and New Years Day so I will have some unstructured recovery time and hope to make the best of it.

It would really nice to be walking after the first of the year; I think that is realistic. I go in next Friday to get my stitches and staples out we will see what the doctor says then.