Thursday, July 30, 2009
Day 1: 7/30
Today was a good day as far as pain goes. I learned my lesson from yesterday and never quite let my painkiller level to run down. As soon as I started to feel any pain and it had been more than 3 1/2 hours since my last vicodin, I took another. I was able to manage my pain for most of the day and even fell asleep several times. It seemed like every time I laid on the couch I was soon asleep. This is a stark contrast from Thursday, when I lay wide awake for most of the day, despite my best efforts to take a nap. Several people called to check on me during the day, which was nice. However, I feel like my conversations were pretty disjointed due to the pain medicine. So, if I talked to you on Thursday and I didn't make any sense, I'm sorry.
The Honeymoon
My first night post-surgery was terrible. I laid down around 10pm and took a vicodin (hydrocodone) and a flexeril (cyclobenzaprine). I woke up at midnight and went to the bathroom. I woke up around 2am to go to the bathroom, but I was in excruciating pain. Even attempting to move my leg resulted in shooting pain up and down my leg at an intensity of 8 out of 10. Thankfully, I had left a vicodin on the nightstand, so I took one and tried to go back to sleep until the effects kicked in. Around 3am, I woke up again and this time I was able to get out of bed and go to the bathroom. I awoke again at 430am and headed back to the bathroom. At this point, I wondered if I had any fluid left in my body to pee out. At 6am, I went to the bathroom again. At 730, I woke up with pain in my leg and took 2 vicodin and another flexeril and went back to sleep. Around 930am I woke up for good (and of course, went to the bathroom again) when the hospital called to check on me.
I have to sleep with two pillows under my right leg as well as keeping the ace bandage on there. I dont have to sleep in the knee brace, but every time I get out of bed, I have to put it back on, which gets to be very tedious. I usually sleep on my stomach or side, so I could never really get comfortable sleeping on my back. At one point, I woke up and my entire right arm and leg were numb. Another time I woke up and was laying on my left side, with my right leg laying on top of a pillow which was on top of my left leg. Not very comfortable, to say the least.
I have to sleep with two pillows under my right leg as well as keeping the ace bandage on there. I dont have to sleep in the knee brace, but every time I get out of bed, I have to put it back on, which gets to be very tedious. I usually sleep on my stomach or side, so I could never really get comfortable sleeping on my back. At one point, I woke up and my entire right arm and leg were numb. Another time I woke up and was laying on my left side, with my right leg laying on top of a pillow which was on top of my left leg. Not very comfortable, to say the least.
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
The Big Day
I woke up at 5am this morning for a 6am call time for a 7:30am surgery. I left my shorts on at my parents house, so we had to swing by my apartment to pick some up. Even with the side trip, we arrived around 6:10am. I had to fill out about 10 sheets of paperwork and then I sat around waiting for what seemed like an eternity. Around 7:15 they called me back for pre-op preparations. Apparently 3 other surgeries that morning required a nerve block (as opposed to general anesthesia, which I was getting), so they were running behind schedule. Dr. Griffin stopped by and asked what was taking so long, and the nurse explained the situation. At that point I have one nurse shaving my leg, one giving me the IV and one asking me about allergies and medications. In a few short minutes I was ready to go back to the OR. Apparently there was some sort of miscomunication, as no one told me to bring my knee brace with me on the day of surgery. So, I had to send my dad back to the house to get it out of my car. Ooops.
They wheeled me into the operating room and transferred me from the gurney to the table. They were trying to get my leg into the correct position for the procedure, which is the last thing I remember.
When I woke up in the recovery room, I was a little confused but I quickly regained my bearings and one of the nurses noticed I was awake. She asked if I wanted something to drink and I remember thinking I wanted some water, but she said they had coke, diet coke or sprite and I couldn't think of the word for water, so I just asked for a coke. A few minutes later, Dr. Griffin stopped by with some pictures from the surgery. She told me everything went well and while she was in there she noticed my meniscus was rough, so she trimmed that up as well. I tried to make sense of the pictures, but listening to what she was saying and trying to decipher the pictures were too much for my post-anesthesia haze. I stayed in the recovery room for a while longer. I don't really have any idea how long, as I was pretty geeked up on morphine. I remember them taking my blood pressure and removing my EKG leads and filling out some paper work, so it had to have been 10-15 minutes. The nurse said my parents were pulling the car around, so I plopped into a wheel chair and she pushed me out to the loading dock.
They wheeled me into the operating room and transferred me from the gurney to the table. They were trying to get my leg into the correct position for the procedure, which is the last thing I remember.
When I woke up in the recovery room, I was a little confused but I quickly regained my bearings and one of the nurses noticed I was awake. She asked if I wanted something to drink and I remember thinking I wanted some water, but she said they had coke, diet coke or sprite and I couldn't think of the word for water, so I just asked for a coke. A few minutes later, Dr. Griffin stopped by with some pictures from the surgery. She told me everything went well and while she was in there she noticed my meniscus was rough, so she trimmed that up as well. I tried to make sense of the pictures, but listening to what she was saying and trying to decipher the pictures were too much for my post-anesthesia haze. I stayed in the recovery room for a while longer. I don't really have any idea how long, as I was pretty geeked up on morphine. I remember them taking my blood pressure and removing my EKG leads and filling out some paper work, so it had to have been 10-15 minutes. The nurse said my parents were pulling the car around, so I plopped into a wheel chair and she pushed me out to the loading dock.
Friday, July 10, 2009
Pop It, Lock It, Polka Dot It
The Injury:
The mere mention of three little letters can make even the strongest men cringe: A, C, L. When people ask about my knee, whether its a little kid at the pool or an old lady on MARTA, I get the same sour-faced reaction. Immediately images of Willis McGahee or Tom Brady jump to mind. People always ask how it happened and I don't have quite as dramatic a story. My injury was non-contact, more along the lines of Tony Allen's injury (I was actually watching this game on TV). I was playing ultimate frisbee on offense, running back in after a deep cut. The stall count on the thrower was getting high, so I cut in to get the disc. The disc went up and another player was running about 10 yards in front of me in the opposite direction. I called him off as I had a better angle and an easier play on the disc. I realized as I was in mid-air and about to catch the disc that the other player didn't hear me and was looking back towards the thrower, so I tried to twist my body to the left (CCW) to avoid a bone-jarring full speed collision. I caught the disc with my left hand at the same time as my teammate, but as I was flying by him, it was ripped out of my hand, adding some additional rotational velocity. A split second later a landed on my right foot and I felt my cleat catch in the slightly muddy ground below. My torso kept spinning and my cleats held tight. I could feel my femur displace in my knee and the grinding of bone-on-bone inside my knee. I didn't feel a pop, so much as a sudden stopping of the shearing force and then my cleat came free and I was airborne again, probably propelled by a . Next, I felt my lower leg rebound back in a clockwise direction as I tumbled to the ground. I let out a string of expletives and lay in the fetal position clutching my knee. I was pretty sure I had torn my ACL from the moment I hit the ground, and the reaction of a few people who had seen the accident from the sideline didn't do much to change my opinion.
A minute or two later a trainer came over to check me out. He performed the anterior drawer test, Lachman's test, valgus and varus stress tests. My leg muscles were pretty spastic at this point, so results were inconclusive. Most of the pain was in the back of my knee, so he figured it was a hamstring pull. The hamstrings serve to decelerate the shin bone when running so that the ACL has an easier job of keeping the tibia in place. I guess a hamstring tendon injury could manifest itself as posterior knee pain, but I had a feeling that it was a more substantial injury due to the bone-on-bone sensation I felt and the torquing mechanism of injury, which doesn't really fit the MO of a hamstring injury. He gave me two tylenol and sent me on my way with a bag of ice. I iced in the car on the way home and all night up until bedtime. The swelling seemed to be contained and the pain wasn't too bad by the time I went to sleep. I figured I'd make a doctors appointment sometime the next week to get it checked out. Hey, it's not like I tore both ACLs or anything.
The mere mention of three little letters can make even the strongest men cringe: A, C, L. When people ask about my knee, whether its a little kid at the pool or an old lady on MARTA, I get the same sour-faced reaction. Immediately images of Willis McGahee or Tom Brady jump to mind. People always ask how it happened and I don't have quite as dramatic a story. My injury was non-contact, more along the lines of Tony Allen's injury (I was actually watching this game on TV). I was playing ultimate frisbee on offense, running back in after a deep cut. The stall count on the thrower was getting high, so I cut in to get the disc. The disc went up and another player was running about 10 yards in front of me in the opposite direction. I called him off as I had a better angle and an easier play on the disc. I realized as I was in mid-air and about to catch the disc that the other player didn't hear me and was looking back towards the thrower, so I tried to twist my body to the left (CCW) to avoid a bone-jarring full speed collision. I caught the disc with my left hand at the same time as my teammate, but as I was flying by him, it was ripped out of my hand, adding some additional rotational velocity. A split second later a landed on my right foot and I felt my cleat catch in the slightly muddy ground below. My torso kept spinning and my cleats held tight. I could feel my femur displace in my knee and the grinding of bone-on-bone inside my knee. I didn't feel a pop, so much as a sudden stopping of the shearing force and then my cleat came free and I was airborne again, probably propelled by a . Next, I felt my lower leg rebound back in a clockwise direction as I tumbled to the ground. I let out a string of expletives and lay in the fetal position clutching my knee. I was pretty sure I had torn my ACL from the moment I hit the ground, and the reaction of a few people who had seen the accident from the sideline didn't do much to change my opinion.
A minute or two later a trainer came over to check me out. He performed the anterior drawer test, Lachman's test, valgus and varus stress tests. My leg muscles were pretty spastic at this point, so results were inconclusive. Most of the pain was in the back of my knee, so he figured it was a hamstring pull. The hamstrings serve to decelerate the shin bone when running so that the ACL has an easier job of keeping the tibia in place. I guess a hamstring tendon injury could manifest itself as posterior knee pain, but I had a feeling that it was a more substantial injury due to the bone-on-bone sensation I felt and the torquing mechanism of injury, which doesn't really fit the MO of a hamstring injury. He gave me two tylenol and sent me on my way with a bag of ice. I iced in the car on the way home and all night up until bedtime. The swelling seemed to be contained and the pain wasn't too bad by the time I went to sleep. I figured I'd make a doctors appointment sometime the next week to get it checked out. Hey, it's not like I tore both ACLs or anything.
Allow Me to Reintroduce Myself
The Person:
My name is Dusty Smith and I have a torn ACL. Not quite the melodrama of an AA meeting, but I feel like an introduction is in order. At this point I'm 33 days post-injury and 19 days out from my reconstruction.
The Purpose:
I have three goals for this blog:
My name is Dusty Smith and I have a torn ACL. Not quite the melodrama of an AA meeting, but I feel like an introduction is in order. At this point I'm 33 days post-injury and 19 days out from my reconstruction.
The Purpose:
I have three goals for this blog:
- Personal journal
- Update log
- Informational source
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