Surgery day finally arrived. I was anxious for it to come. I was tired of feeling like I couldn't do anything because of my bum knee. Several times I had fallen flat on my face, simply because my knee had no stability at all and it would just give out on me with no warning. One minute I'm standing, the next I'm flat on my face. And one time, because I don't do well with limitations, I thought I would try exercising. When I jumped and landed my knee literally went sideways and I fell on the floor screaming. Not one of my finest moments, for sure.
I'm not a surgery virgin. I had my first surgery at 18. I had my appendix removed. It had gang green growing on it. I have had 5 cesarean sections, surgery to remove an ectopic pregnancy, a bilateral tubal ligation, and 2 Austin/Aiken bunyonectomies (1 on each foot). I know what surgery entails. So I wasn't really scared about this surgery either. Boy was I naive!
The moment I woke up from surgery I was in the most intense pain I had ever felt in my entire life. Worse than any surgery recovery I've ever had, worse than any before surgery pain I'd ever felt. The surgeon came in to check up on me after surgery and I looked at him and said, "You hurt me."
I went home within an hour and for almost 2 days the pain was so intense I couldn't even sleep to escape the pain. I cried. A lot. I moaned. A lot. And no amount of medicine or TLC seemed to help. I wanted to climb out of my skin. My leg stayed wrapped for the first three days. Which meant now showering either. Not that I would have had the strength or endurance for such a matter.
The most cruel joke was after just having holes drilled into my bones, and a piece of bone removed from my knee to create a new ACL, I was expected to walk on my knee and participate in physical therapy. Tears would run down my cheeks as the physical therapist would just try to bend my very stiff knee. I cannot even describe the intensity of the pain, other than to say, I'm pretty sure I have PTSD. I'm not sure what I would do if I ever had to have this surgery again. Honestly. I'm not just saying that for show. I don't think I could ever do it again.
With the increased medicine to handle the pain, I began vomiting and feeling car sick constantly. It was a vicious duo. If I didn't take pain medicine I was in so much pain. If I took enough to just take the edge off I was vomiting. There was no way to win.
On top of all of this, I was still in school and besides missing the class the very day after surgery, I never missed a single class. I was so drugged up to deal with the pain I have no idea how I made it through any class at all, let alone taking mid terms, lab exams, and weekly quizzes. As I rode to class in the car I carried ziploc bags to vomit into. 4 days after surgery, highly drugged, I scored a 100% on a fill in the blank A&P exam, naming every bone in the skull!
The swelling and bruising weren't too bad. It definitely felt a lot worse than it looked. I used crutches for the first few days, but then I was completely crutch free. I went to physical therapy twice a week for a couple of months and am still going once a week for a couple more months. It's not my favorite part of the week.
In my previous expereinces, each morning I woke up I was able to notice some improvement. I was really frustrated when I would wake up each morning and my knee wasn't feeling any better. I had to change my perspective and instead of looking for daily progress, I needed to measure my progress on a weekly or even monthly basis. I started feeling pretty depressed with my level of mobility. I am an active go-getter. I don't like sitting still. Learning to move slowly and lower my expectations was very difficult for me. Things that used to take me 20 minutes now took me almost an hour. I had to rely on more help than I liked accepting, and I had to lower my standards of cleanliness in the house as my children had to take over a lot of my work. It was quite a while before I was able to sweep or vacuum again.
My little shadow all of the sudden had a bum knee too. She talked constantly about how her knee "popped in and out" and that she needed the doc to wrap it for her.
I am 5 months out now, and have received permission to go back to full activity. Mostly I feel great. Normal walking doesn't bother me. We took a couple of hikes recently and it felt great. But after vigorous activity my knee still hurts for a couple of days. Going up the stairs is still uncomfortable. It's not as bad as it used to be, but definately still a noticeable discomfort. Kneeling is painful. I'm told that this will take about a year before I feel normal again. And the amount of muscle wasting in my thigh from surgery and not being able to exercise makes my leg very weak. Needless to say, I'm totally out of shape. I'm scared and anxious, all at the same time, about getting back to regular exercising.
(1 1/2 inches of muscle mass lost in my right quad after just 2 weeks)
But there is one thing I can tell you for sure, just thinking about jumping on a trampoline almost sends me into a full blown panic attack.
