Wednesday, October 28, 2009

Post-Surgery Blog

So I had my Arthroscopic knee surgery on Friday October 23, 2009. Dr. Bachner found a nice ugly piece of torn cartilage jamming my right knee joint. It was around the back the knee joint, stuck in a place it clearly did not belong. He went after it with a meat-grinding vacuum cleaner, and suctioned it out.

As I came out from under the Propofol, I felt a burning, throbbing, itching pain in the knee itself. I told them so. The surgical nurse immediately reached for a syringe, and began to shoot it into my IV bag. I asked her what she was giving me. "Demerol" she answered. That is the synthetic morphine that Michael Jackson was addicted to. "Jesus! You're giving me the full Michael Jackson stack", I said. The anesthesiologist took the floor and said, "But you have a guardian angel, and that makes all the difference." The guardian angel was the anesthesiologist, of course.

You may be able to kill Michael Jackson with a combo of Propofol & Demerol, but you can't kill me.

Amazingly, enough, I was able to put considerable weight on my surgically repaired right knee immediately after surgery. I crutched out of the surgery center, but I used the right leg to bear weight. As it turned out, this was just because of the Demerol and Toradol. The pain would soon come.

Saturday, day 2, was the rough day. The Demerol and Toradol injections wore off. The inflammation and pain went up considerably. I was reluctant to use the full dose of Vicodin the Doc prescribed for me, mostly because of Brett Favre's bad experiences with the drug. For those of you who do not know, Vicodin is basically hydrocodon. It is a narcotic opiate given to us by the poppy plant. It is not all that different from morphine, opium, and heroine. I wasn't to thrilled by the prospect of using this shit. There was a painful burning itch and throb deep in the flesh. This is the trauma of the surgery. Couldn't sleep a wink with that pain beacon going off. Finally, I caved in and took the full dose of.

Sunday, day 3, was truly a day of rest. Looobed on the Vicodin, I fell asleep repeated. I must have slept 16 to 17 hours out of that 24 hour period. This was good. The sleep was vital to healing. Monday, day 4 was similar. The only interesting aspect of this day was the fact that I cut the surgical bandages, cleaned my wounds, applied neosporen, and re-bandaged the knee.

At this moment, I still need the crutches to get around. I can put considerable weight on the knee, but it does not feel stable. I would not want to try to walk on it. I hear an assortment of clicks and pops as I move on it. The joint feels loose. I may have to go through a full battery of rehab before it tightens up again. I'll let you know how things go.