Day 2

Today has been better, although still a significant challenge. The fifteen foot 8am trek to the bathroom, essentially at the expired end of my 2am pain meds, was by far the most distressing and difficult ten minutes of the day. I went back to the Stone Clinic one last time (for this week) and had my dressings checked and changed. They were mostly clean and with the help of a Toradol injection in the backside I cringed my way through another PT session.

Interestingly, the advice from the clinical side of the house in terms of meds is to try to get by with as little as possible. “As needed” is the default prescription frequency and they are clear in their opinion that less is better, both for your liver and your mind. It is an approach that, in general, I fully support. On the PT side of the clinic, however, there is a different viewpoint. When I first met with the therapist today I said, “Great to see you, don’t touch me.” With this greeting he concluded that likely I had “fallen behind on my meds”. In PT, they seem to prefer a well medicated patient with which to work. If you flinch and jump and yelp every time they try to get your limbs working again, then obviously they cannot do their job. This scenario is bad for the patient as well as this delay in initiating movement is potentially damaging to the tissue and can have long term consequences. I have no problem working through pain, but there is a clear subjective difference in my mind between good pain and bad pain. Good pain is stretching and straining and forcing out the bad stuff. Bad pain is injurious and damaging. At this point, pretty much everything feels like damage, even though I am told that my knee is solid and, short of a hyper-extension or other forceful trauma, I cannot easily re-injure the knee. Well, certainly if I was able to bend it, eventually I would begin to blow out the stitches from the five holes they left behind, but otherwise, I am apparently safe from further damage. At least for now, I am not willing to find out.

Finally, I am home again. Back with my little girls and familiar surroundings. Without the ability to stay in the city during the last four days, this simply would not have been possible. Staying at my brother-in-laws with his wife, my wife, and the ferrets made this entire event as convenient and comfortable as it could have possibly been, despite the fact that the eighteen foot walls in my “recovery room” were painted semi-gloss blood red and featured the stuffed and mounted heads of a multi-point buck and a zebra. It was a long few days. But I’ve made it through what I am told is the worst of it and now it is nice to be home.

I will of course do my exercises and get focused on recovery just as soon as my every waking thought is not of finding some way to better manage the pain. I have high hopes for improvement in this area over the next few days. For now, I am so tired I can barely type. It is nearly 7:30pm. 30 minutes to the next med consumption. I’ll probably need to set my alarm or I will surely sleep through it.

Thank you to everyone who has called and emailed and otherwise sent wishes for a strong and speedy recovery.

Your thoughts have been greatly appreciated.