Split Screen

Half of this is written before my first post-op doctor visit, half after.

Before:
I have a lot of trepidation over what’s going to come out of today’s visit. There are a ton of unknowns, many of which will probably remain unknown after today. The big question is whether things are progressing on the right track or not. Is my leg healing?

The other big questions have more to do with day to day life: when am I going to be more mobile; when am I going to be able to get back to work; when am I going to be able to start having some physical activity beyond moving around the condo and going to the bathroom? Other big things on my mind are what’s up with the cast – how long am I going to have this monster brace and when am I going to have a more normal, below the knee cast.

What about moving my knee? My knee hasn’t been bent in two weeks. Do they want me to bend it yet, and if so will I be able to?

Mostly, I’m just hoping that things are healing well for the long run. That will make me happiest in the grand scheme, and will also make the intermediate questions and checkpoints fall into line a lot better.

After:
Good news! Things are going the way they should. Everyone’s happy with the progress so far. I will never have a cast, which is bad news in that I’d hoped to be getting rid of this brace before too long, but good news in that, well, no cast.

When they took the bandages off of my leg, I nearly puked. They took the staples out of my incision, which is huge. It starts in the middle of my knee and goes halfway down my shin. It is a nasty, gorey mess right out of a medical text. Also, my whole lower leg is still really swollen. Not at all the beautiful sexy piston that it was just two short weeks ago.

The x-rays were something of a shock. I thought I had 3 pins in my leg. That would be three pins below the break. 4 above. 7 total. Also, I think they used a hose clamp somewhere in there. Not sure. Anyhow, there’s metal from just under my knee to just above mid-court on my shin, with lots of nice big pins to hold it together.

Typically, a tibial plateau takes 3 months post-op before it can bear weight. My doctor said I should be able to bear weight “much much sooner” than that, because my situation there is not as bad as most and because the parts and pieces and hose clamps they use now support things much better than they used to.

Physical therapy starts next week. I can start dipping my toes back into going to work next week as well, although my productivity will not be at an all time high. I’ll need to spend most of my day with my leg raised up, which makes walking the site kind of hard.

Don’t nobody crash down at the Point tonight, ya hear?