Sunday, September 09, 2007

Surgery and all that stuff

This past May, my little man was sitting in his high chair. Little man was done as he could be with his lunch so I took him out of his high chair and let him down on the ground. I didn't see that he had grabbed my fork off the table on his way down to the floor.

So as he starts to sprint by me, I plant my feet, turn my body, reach for my lovely son. *POP* *SNAP* and all of a sudden my knee is in excrutiating pain.

Of course, Connor at this point, sees that something is wrong, turns around, gives me the fork, and turns around and jets off to play with something else.

Meanwhile I'm on the floor trying hard to push my knee back into position so I could stand up.

Fast forward to that weekend. My knee is four times the size of the other knee, and the doctor at the urgent care clinic we went to was happy that I hadn't broken my kneecap.

It took six weeks for the swelling to go down to only three times the size of the other one.

By that time I'd seen my Primary Care doc, and gotten a referral for a good orthopedic surgeon.

Because of all the happenings and travelling I did, I had a nice prescription for pain and a great knee brace for the rest of the summer.

By the time I got the MRI and had everything confirmed by the surgeon, the only option was surgery. I had torn the meniscus in my right knee. Not a significant surgery by any means. Out patient, and I was to recover in a few days/weeks.

My parents graciously offered to come down to take care of Connor while I was recovering. So while they hung out with the little man, I went through my procedure (took the doc 20 minutes to fix it!) and laid in bed for a week (ok, as much as possible LOL) my folks took him to Gymboree, swimming, and tried to stay cool through a nasty heat wave. They even took us to the beach for a week once I'd felt almost normal!

So I spent the first week in bed. Second week trying not to take the good drugs, and trying to work the knee out. I was really limited in activity until the stitches (all two of them) came out. They were just in the wrong place to bed my knee more than a slow walk would allow. Third week at the beach, and week four, I can honestly say, I'm back to normal.

Every now and again, I do get a twinge of pain/discomfort, but its usually because I'm moving my knee/leg in a way that I haven't in a very long time. I'm now working on building the muscles of that leg back up, because there is a visable (at least to me) difference in size between the two legs.

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