Day 2

Day 2 went on very smoothly. My fever seemed to stay away after that one hellish night. Knee exercises were much easier. Knee exercises where you extend your leg and move your foot towards and away from your head now no longer hurts.

Getting around is pretty easy at this point. I have got pretty used to getting around by limping slightly. Almost prefer this to getting around with crutches, but probably better to use the crutches when covering larger distances.

Went out do dinner with some family friends and didn't have the knee iced for about 4 hours. Wasn't in any pain, the knee just started to get quite warm since there is so much covering it (ace bandage, moisture barrier, water cooling pack, outer bandage, and then the brace). Since I wasn't really in any pain after not having an ibuprofen for10 hours (missed one pill at dinner) makes me realize that I don't really have any pain in the knee. Which is very good as far as I see it.

Day 1

So the first day after the surgery went really well for the first part. I was feeling really good and had no reactions to the anesthesia and had no real pain that required the hard core pain meds. Was able to go run some errands with my Dad, and was able to get around very easily on the crutches.

The only bad part happened when I went to sleep. I think towards the evening I started to have a little bit of a fever, which apparently isn't uncommon after having ACL surgery. Apparently it's only a problem if it's above 101-103 and I didn't feel that hot. All the achyness from the fever is now gone which is great, because that's not a fun feeling at all!

So now I'm on Day 2 and I've changed the cpm to 70 degrees!

Day 0

So the surgery went really really well, I honestly couldn't have imagined that it would go so well. The nurses were really kind and had their stuff together. I got into the surgery center just before 6 am, filled out paper work and then got prepped for surgery. One of the nurses got the iv set and then lots of visits by the other nurses, doctors, and the anesthesiologist. Every one made sure to ask me what knee they were operating on. I initialed my knee to make sure they did the right one. :-)

Then they whisked me off to the surgery room and then after making some jokes about basketball injuries, I was out.

The next thing that I knew I came to and they had my knee in the cpm and were wheeling me out of the surgery area. The first thought that came to me was that I had just woken up after a wonderful fun night downtown! I guess I was dreaming that I was downtown while they were probing and drilling around in my knee! :-)

Then after my Dad and I got instructions on how to use the cpm, ice cooler, and the perscriptions and exercises to do, I was dishcharged! Was about 10:30 when they dishcharged me! So fast!

I was very alert, and remembered everything after the surgery. No nausea, other than when I used the computer.

Since there were no nerve blocks I was able to move my leg when I came to, and had it being moved in the cpm. Having the cpm (something like this) and an ice water circulating pump have been godsends. I had the cpm set to 60 degrees for the first day, and then I increase the angle by 5 degrees every day. I'm also starting knee exercises right away on day 1! It's good to be starting on the rehab right away with no requirement for down time!

Background:
I tore my ACL while playing basketball about 3 years ago now. I thought that I would be okay not having surgery on it if I didn't play basketball any more and just stuck to sports that didn't require having an ACL (running, biking, etc.). But then I had it give out 2x in the last year. Once while playing capture the flag. I forgot that I didn't have an ACL in my left leg when I cut side to side with the flag in the final play of the tie-breaking game... then I had it give out again when I jumped off a ledge about 2' off the ground. This was something that shouldn't have given out with just a missing ACL in my mind, so it seemed that with the recent giving out of the knee that I was doing things that required an ACL and the knee wasn't holding up well to having these injuries. So I had some partial meniscus damage and tares that were due to the 3 times that the knee joint had impacted the meniscus. So with that I realized that if I wanted to run again (because of the meniscus damage) I needed to have ACL surgery! So here I am!

Well that's about all for this post. Others should be a little shorter than this one I would expect. But wanted to get all the details of the surgery posted. If anyone wants to know more details of how things went for me, feel free to ask me in the comments!

The Journey Begins!

The idea behind starting a blog on this is to provide people who are going to be having ACL surgery in the future with some information on my personal experience of having ACL surgery. This is not meant to be a medical journal of correct absolute facts, but rather my experience. I am also doing this to have a regular thing that I write about that I can look back on for how I have progressed and to motivate myself as I go through physio therapy! I am also doing this so that people who care about me and care to read this can be updated on my progress! :-)

I'm going to keep this post short since I need to get to bed "early" since I need to be up at 5 so I can make it to the doctors at 5:45 AM!

Feeling excited and nervous, and happy to be getting my knee fixed! Just focusing on staying calm and thinking positive thoughts. Very touched by all the people who called me or messaged to wish me good luck.

Next post I'll give some background on why I'm getting surgery and how I feel after surgery! So it all begins!