The days after

The day after the surgery, I was awoken by the doorbell at 8 in the morning. Some guy had come to deliver a medieval-looking thing, called a Constant Passive Motion (CPM) machine. I say this machine is medieval in that it is a pure torture device. After your leg is strapped in, the machine moves and bends your knee according to the degree that you set. My doctor orders it to begin at 60 and to increment it each time I use it (which is at least 2 hours, 2x a day). Imagine all that inner scar tissue being ripped with each motion.

I am somewhat surprised about all the surgery-related people that have called me (and I was going to give a fake contact number :D). One of the nurses from the hospital called me the following day to make sure I was feeling OK, as did the doctor's secretary. In a groggy state, I made a follow-up appointment thinking that I wouldn't feel well enough to even see him in 2 weeks but now I think I will be ready. A doctor/PA also called me two days after to ask how I was doing; he told me I could cut my Vicodin pills in half if I wanted a less potent dose.

Two days after surgery, I also had to start physical therapy again. I was half an hour late because it took me probably an hour to shower and change, 15 minutes to finally make it downstairs to the car, and another 15 minutes to make it up the three steps leading to the PT office. I was in so much pain the therapist was afraid to touch me. It didn't help that my brace has super Velcro that takes forever to unlatch. I think going so soon after the surgery was pretty useless. The appointment 2 days after that was much more fruitful.

Now that the pain has subsided, I am able to do more exercises on my own. Today I was able to do some leg lifts without pulling up my leg with my arms! It was slow and a bit painful, but I was finally able to! I think it was partially psychological because you just know there will be some pain. To push me along, the therapist had shocked my muscles at the last session to force them to contract. It hurt like crazy (kinda like when I had acupuncture and the guy increased the frequency) and actually made me scream out in pain. But I have to get going on this! I looked at the prescription of activities given to the P/T for me to do and it looks like I'm behind! Some people are able to walk without crutches and/or brace by day 14 but I don't think that I can achieve that in just 4 days.

I am very eager to have the stitches removed next Wednesday though. I feel some of them pulling when I do certain motions and sometimes it itches a lot. And looking at the stiff, black threads all knotted up in my flesh when I'm changing the dressing is freaky. I would take a picture, but I'll spare you the grossness.