All aboard the Pain Train! Right Knee ACL....

Well, I'm 5 days into recovery from my right ACL reconstruction. Those five days have certainly had their highs and lows. Mostly lows interspersed with a lot of pain. I came home on Wednesday at about noon and was in a serious drug induced haze until Friday. T has been a saint and been very helpful waiting on me. Not to mention our 2 very demanding twins who also ask quite of bit of their mom.

I met with the doctor and PT on Thursday and got a report of what he saw when he was in there digging around in my knee. Dr. Shutte fixed four things: 1) He found some wear on the backside of the kneecap, some fraying (looked like seaweed in the picture), which is not desired. He was able to trim up the fray and said I should be better off. 2) He also found and removed a free floating piece of cartilage about the size of a peanut that was either meniscus or a piece of the torn ACL. 3) Trimmed (doctor's call it "fix") the tears on my meniscus on the lateral and posterior sides. 4) And last, he reconstructed the ACL using my patellar tendon, affixing it in place with 2 screws.

All in all, the doctor said I had a made a wise choice to have this done as I was "on the road to having a self destructing knee". He commented that my quad strength and ROM was better than expected, which hopefully translates to a strong recovery.

I've been following the PT instructions on exercises and for the most part been able to perform them with out much issue. I was able to get on the spin bike yesterday and make full revolutions, which was not expected until Monday. While in the CPM machine, I'm able to crank it up to 115 degrees.

The hardest part has been the mornings. Talk about pain, oh man, I've seen the PAIN TRAIN and I don't like it. Every morning so far has been brutal with my first step out of bed, my scale of pain spikes to a 9 out of 10. I haven't been that successful in managing the pain medications in the mornings. My full bladder forces me out of bed before I can load up on meds. They definitely weren't kidding when they told me to stay on schedule with the meds.

If you're not familiar with Larry Tate the Office Linebacker, well now's the time. I was introduced to him back in my cubicle days at RightNow Technologies. If you've ever had a job in the office environment, I think you might relate and enjoy these few videos. The pain train's comin! Cu'z when its game time, it's pain time! Don't bring that weak ass stuff up in this humpy-bumpy!