Surgery Complete!
I went under for surgery on January 16th. Let me tell you about the process. It was rather annoying. I was told to arrive at 10:30am for checkin. You are not allowed to eat or drink anything after midnight the day before surgery. I have always been in the habit of eating every 2 to 3 hours. My body responds well to protien intake every 2-3 hours. If I do not eat within 3 hours I get grumpy. I was already grumpy when I arrived at 10am for checkin. I got more and more grumpy as I sat in the pre op room waiting for the operating room to be available. My Surgeon had gotten stuck taking longer on his first patient. It happens, can’t blame anyone, no big deal. But I was getting cranky after 4pm. I didn’t much like sitting in a hospital bed for that long of a time. I probably met 12 different people coming up to me saying he or she was going to be my nurse for the day. I felt like I was on Candid Camera and they were pranking me, like I wouldn’t notice they weren’t the same person. Every 30 minutes a new face would pop in ask me a million questions about my health then leave. Different people would pop in and ask the same questions. How old are you? what’s your name? what are we working on today? when was the last time you ate? are you on blood thinners? are you pregant you think you’re pregnant? are you on any meds? blah blah blah same questions all day. I suppose I prefer that they annoy me and get everything correct.
at around 4pm they put something in my IV and next thing I know I’m being woken up on the bed, a brace is on my leg and they are asking me to cough. I cough an then they take something out of my face. Then they tell me to take deep breaths. They remind me that I will need to take 10 deep breaths every hour and try to cough to prevent respiratory infection. I never had a nurse tell me this after a surgery so I was wondering if something went wrong. Everyone was acting like they were in a hurry. At first I though something went wrong and they were rushing me to some ICU or something but it turned out they all just wanted to go home. My brother was called in to take me home. They asked me if I was in pain and I said yes. On a scale of 1 to 10, 10 being the highest, what pain was I in? I said 9. They went for some needles and said ” give her the nerve block” and I said ” NO NO, I dont want it, just give me an asprin” they looked at me like I was crazy. I remember before surgery they explained all the risks of the nerve block and it scared the hell out of me. There was no way I was taking that crap. I ended up suffering all night.
My brother took me home as I dry heaved in the back seat of the car. I was not feeling so well. I have had 3 surgeries in the last 2 years this being the third and most painful and unpleasant. I wasn’t accustomed to puking after coming out or being in THAT much pain. This was all a bit concerning for me at first.
I got home and started popping the Norco they prescribed me. It did not dull the pain. I popped a few more pills. Still no difference. I popped a few more. I remember it made me groggy and unable to focus but it did nothing for the pain. I sat watching the clock until I could take another pill. I looked at the prescription and noticed it said not to take more than 9 pills within a 24 hour period. I looked at the clock. It had only been 12 hours since surgery and I had taken 7 pills already. I told myself I needed to rest and hopefully I would sleep for 8 hours and wake up and be able to take the final 2 pills I had permission to take within a 24 hour period to last me up to the next 24 hr start period. I was still in a good deal of pain but I’m so obedient that I would NOT go over the 9 pill limit and I needed to ration them. I laid down on my bed. Set up my polar ice care unit and sat in darkness with that sound of silence booming at me. It was silent but my ears were throbbing from being in pain I could hear the blood flowing through my head. I needed to rest. I lay in bed, closed my eyes, focuses on my breathing and said, “today is bad, tomorrow will be the worst and after tomorrow its all better from there”. I knew the next days would be rough and I prepared for it. I focused on breathing and on NOT being in pain. Slowly, I was able to ignore the pain and eventually I feel asleep. The sleep was weird. It wasn’t real sleep. It was 2-4 hour intervals of sleep with weird nightmares that would immediately disappear from my memory within seconds of waking up. I’d groan from being in pain for about 10 minutes. My brother would rush in asking me if something was wrong and I’d just say, “no I’m just being a baby, it hurts, I didn’t know it was going to hurt this bad”. I’d go back to sleep and wake up in another 2-4 hours. This was the cycle for the first 24 hours.
I wasn’t able to do much in the first 3 days. I was tweeting and on FB but I’m not sure anything I said made sense. I remember watching a bunch of conspiracy videos but I can’t remember much of anything they said in the videos. I watched about 18 hours of video of the JFK conspiracy video and I actually remember a great deal of that. I was obsessed with JFK for a whole day. I could not turn away from the TV. I felt like a crazy person.
Most the days are blurs. I don’t recall much of anything. I remember people would call to see how I was doing and I’d answer and say ” dude I just had surgery, I’m tired I don’t mean to be rude but I don’t want to talk on the phone” I remember in my head thinking it was so rude of them to call. Now in a straight frame of mind, you and I know that it’s not rude to check in on someone. It’s thoughtful. But I remember being so insulted at the time every time the phone rang. I was like “don’t these people know they shouldn’t bother people right after they’ve had surgery” LOL man I was such a bitch.
Today I’m doing rather well. I’m in little to no pain. I stopped taking pain meds all together 36 hours ago. My vision is still blurry ( from the meds) I’m having heat flashes ( from meds) but other than that I feel good. I am still really cranky and easily irritated. I am, however, walking without a cane or crutch. I have this big obnoxious leg brace on. It’s locked in a straight position. I can put full weight on it and walk about 100 yards before it starts hurting. I start PT next week. My doctor says I will most likely lose the brace by the 31st of Jan. By April 10th I should be able to start doing weight training on these legs again. Nothing before then tho because my new ACL needs to go through revascularization.
The things that have helped me immensely have been Lymphatic massage and IR light therapy. RICE ( rest ice compression and elevation) are common practice and I did that and I’m sure it helped a great deal. However, I noticed a huge reduction of swelling after using my tendlite unit and much much more reduction in swelling after I used my “stick” to do a lymphatic massage. Who knows tho. I didn’t use the light or stick until day 3 because the area was too tender to massage. Maybe day 3 is just the magic day where everything starts going down drastically. All I know, is every time I have inflammation I use this tendlite unit and it works like a charm.
To be completely honest I’m upset that I can’t weight train for 12 weeks. That is the longest I’ve ever gone without being able to train. I have already noticed a lot of atrophy and muscle mass loss. I’ve lost 10 lbs already in the last 4 days. I do not like being skinny. I do not like a waif look and I look like a waif. I am too skinny. I will need to manage my diet extremely tightly so that I don’t get flabby. I know that once I do start weight training again, I will get my size back in no time. I’m just bummed about the down time. I will try to find a BJJ gym in San Francisco that will let me sit in and watch so I can still learn while I broken.
So that’s the scoop. I’ve had about 100 emails of people asking how I’m doing. I appreciate everyone checking in on me. I really do. Thank you all for the support. I look forward to getting better and kicking ass for all of you
xoxoxo