Drink Rum

So yesterday I had a visit with my surgeon to go over my knee.

It was great to talk to him about the surgery sober.

I had a few things wrong in my initial postings about my knee.

Firstly... there were two tears in the meniscus... one was severe and the other moderate. The severe tear was removed and resculpted completely. He had before and after photos. The second tear was towards the back of the knee and was in a vascular area (meaning it could get blood) and was healing itself. The doctor left that alone. The meniscus area as a whole looks great. Yay!

He also removed a chunk of scar tissue... about the size of a thumb that was under my knee cap. That was causing the pressure feeling in my leg when I walked. It was jammed up under the knee cap and was right under the muscle in there. That's why I can't lock my knee to "stiff leg" limp... the muscle that holds the knee locked was operated on to get that lump out. Makes sense.

The bone bruise is pretty severe.

He said he was very surprised to see a bruise as bad as the one I have that was still bad after 3 months of healing. He said the impact to the bone was very serious and he was surprised that the bone didn't break completely. I was very lucky in that the surgery for repairing a broken knee is much more serious and has a longer recovery time. He's still concerned about the bone bruise and wants to keep an eye on it.

To give you an idea of what a bone bruise is... imagine you take a hit in the leg or whatever that for some reason is hard enough to break the tissue inside the bone without completely fracturing it. In the top of my leg bone, all the blood vessels are broken and there is swelling inside the bone.

The pain involved with a bone bruise is very similar to a break... the nerve damage is similar.

Essentially, the feeling I've had over the past 3 months has been like walking on a broken leg... without a cast.

The doctor felt sorry for me... he said that he never doubted the seriousness of the injury, but the appearance of that bruise was conclusive evidence of a severely traumatic injury.

Yay!

There's nothing that can be done to help the bruise... just have to wait until it heals on its own.

The prognosis is still very good.

I'll be doing six weeks of physical therapy and then should be done.

I'm going to play paint ball on my birthday... as a triumph over basically 16 weeks of hell.

Of course, I by then I'm pretty sure my Vicodin addiction will be in full swing, but I don't care at the moment. Fix the source of the pain first, then I'll deal with the pain killer issues.