clean!

a very exciting post-surgery day is the day of the first shower, which for me was today! it may not sound all that exciting... but really, it is.

a brief run-down on all activities since surgery 1 week ago.

after surgery on aug. 11... general anesthesia didn't have as big of an effect on me this time around. i remember most everything that was discussed at and about me directly after starting to come to. i'm sure i wasn't in any condition to say much except, "uh... ok..." i didn't get nauseated. and i was pretty coherent a few hours after it was over. unfortunately, some of the things X and Decker (his resident) were telling me was that i kind of fucked up my knee more than had been expected. later the same day, a CPM (continuous passive motion) machine got dropped off and set up at my place so that my leg can be flexed slowly up and down to a specified and adjustable flexion angle. i'm supposed to do it 2 hours at a time for 6-8 hours a day.

more of the details became elucidated the next day (friday aug. 12) when i could talk more seriously about it. cartilage damage on the lateral femoral condyle and radial tear in the lateral meniscus. for the chondral defect, they performed the microfracture technique - which means they poked holes in the subchondral bone, in hopes that undifferentiated stems cells in the marrow might come out to the surface and put some tissue down in the defect. it's not going to be normal articular cartilage. but hopefully it'll be better than nothing, which is what it would be if they'd just left it as is (since cartilage is pretty avascular and won't heal on its own). this cartilage damage is the reason i'll be on crutches for at least 6 wks post-op. keeping me non-weight bearing for that time, hopefully some clot will be allowed to form there and some healing will happen. for the meniscus tear, they really couldn't do anything because i basically tore it in half. when it tore, the hoop stresses holding the meniscus together caused it to pull apart away from the middle leaving a segmental defect that they couldn't do anything about. dr. X told me that i'd need to take it slow, we'd re-scope some time (maybe 6 mos.) down the road and re-evaluate. and that usually his pro football players with ACL reconstruction and cartilage damage, he doesn't have them back on the field for around a year. and that we'd have to talk about my goals and risks (for the future) for degenerative stuff to start happening due to all this damage. it made me sad for sure, mostly because of the uncertainty. and never did he say i'd have to stop playing ultimate. but i feared from the implications of what he said that i might have to make some big adjustments (like play less... retire earlier...). we'll see, though. nothing is definite.

the weekend was fine... sometimes i wondered, "geez... why is there so much pressure every time i stand up," and, "how long is it going to be until it's not totally exhausting just to get from the bed to the bathroom." vicodin and cryocuff became very good friends. CPM machine not so much my best friend. and i basically wore the same blue adidas shorts through surgery and the weekend.

i had a follow-up appointment with dr. X on monday (aug. 15). first, he checked out my wounds and did all the normal ACL stuff. everything looked good - not too much swelling, good patella mobility, i can fire my quad. i think he'd love to have all his ACL reconstructions to go like mine. then i asked for more in depth thoughts on the other stuff. kate and i watched the surgery videos sunday night, too, so things were more clear to us. he told us a story of one of his pro football players, which made it sort of clear that i needed to be patient with the cartilage injury, and that the longer i waited before playing seriously again, the better my chances were for having a fulfilling rest of my ultimate career. he usually doesn't let his pros go back on the football field for 9 mos. to a year. he wants to re-scope sometime like january and take some more videos/pics to compare to the originals from thursday. basically he's going to do everything he can to provide the best care/solutions/whatever for the cartilage and meniscal damage (things i can't control), so all i need to worry about is the ACL part of things (stuff i can control). he wanted to make sure i knew that we can't control biology, and that we'd need to wait and see how things go. so anyway, some very encouraging stuff, and some still uncertain stuff. but it's all stuff i'm glad to know. he told me to hold off on PT until a couple weeks later, but that i could do quad sets and straight leg raises at home til then.

i was still taking vicodin through tuesday. i think on wednesday (aug. 17) i made the decision to totally stop taking it after a taper period on tuesday where i was talking halves. i was good about eating before taking any (except at night) because i know that taking it without makes me dizzy if i have to move about. i'm definitely not one of those pain killer lovers. there are multitudes of more fun drugs out there. i also started feeling infinitely better on wednesday. more capable of crutching around without getting terribly exhausted, able to do quad sets with a lot less pain/discomfort (even without drugs), and i did a couple straight leg raises to kind of prove to myself that i could do them.

thursday (aug. 18), i had my first real non-doctor-related outing for srin's birthday (indian buffet lunch to celebrate). blaise and srin came to pick me up. crutching around in the middle of the day (even the tiny distance between the car and the restaurant) was tough. food was excellent. and i'm glad i got to hang out with srin a little for his birthday. another first for today, as i mentioned earlier, was the shower. ahh. my mom came over and brought one of those shower seats. we also used the stepstool she brought earlier to prop my heel on so i could sit in the shower. we put a plastic back on my knee and taped it down to my leg with packing tape. now i am clean, and it's awesome.