Day 7

Today was quite uneventful. This was a much needed development – or lack thereof. It has been a very long week. The idea that surgery was just seven days ago is incomprehendible. It feels like nothing short of a month at least.

I am actually getting good at being injured again. Surprisingly it takes some practice, some time to adapt. But I am also ready to be over the steep initial section of this recovery and back into the more incremental stuff – like doing fifteen mini-squats instead of just twelve. For now, I suppose the keys to success are patience and diligence. I cannot rush my progress and I cannot get overly anxious for improvement. And I have to keep doing all of the things that help. Now residing amongst the normal daily requirements of work and family are the elevating, the icing, the medications, the stretches, the exercises, and the regular pushing well into the pain in order to improve and maintain range of motion. Already there have been days, I assure you, when I have felt like just skipping it all. People typically talk about physical therapy in terms of the number of days of scheduled PT per week. But recovery requires a daily engagement. When I first met with Dr. Stone I told him I understood that PT would be a substantial commitment of 3 days per week for 3 months. He laughed through a single breath and said, “Oh no. I want you doing physical therapy every day for the rest of your life.”

Of course I was talking about actually going to the PT clinic and although I have pretty good insurance there is no way in hell they are going to help cover that schedule. But he was talking about life. And in alignment with at least one other doctor I talked to, he was essentially saying that once the ACL is torn, the luxury of being able to neglect the health of the knee is lost forever.

I took a shower today. The second one since surgery. For the first shower I just sat outside the tub and leaned into it, resulting in an only half satisfying rinse of my upper body. This time I got a plastic milk crate from the garage and set it upside down in the tub on a non-slip pad. Safety first. Then I went a couple of times around my leg with plastic wrap from the kitchen to keep the sutured areas of my knee dry. It looked a bit like a leftover ham. Our shower head is removable and attached to a long hose – a nice feature in general when you want to direct some focused shower action to specific areas and critical for any sit down affair such as this when one leg is propped up on the side of the tub. My seated posture on the crate made me feel like a geriatric patient and had the unfortunate side effect of accentuating the developing roll around my midsection. Getting rid of that will surely be my next project after this ACL business is sorted out. When I was finished I carefully removed the protective plastic wrap. A strange feeling came over me as I studied my badly beaten bare knee which has been typically covered by a compression sock. Disturbingly swollen and stitched up, it didn’t look familiar at all. The size, the shape, the color, it was entirely all wrong. It was as though it belonged to someone else. At that point I even began to get a bit uncomfortable as I became more aware of my own nakedness in the company of this stranger’s knee. It was quite an odd experience. And no, it wasn't the result of a mild Percocet overdose.

In fact, since I mentioned it, I haven’t taken more than one Percocet in any of the last three days. Today I didn’t even take any. Personally, I don’t feel like it does me much good. It certainly has little or no therapeutic effect unlike the Toradol, which actually contains an anti-inflammatory. Percocet (and all of the morphine derivative drugs for that matter) seem to be good not for reducing pain, but only for reducing my desire to care about pain.

In general though, my knee is getting better. It's taking its sweet time about it but it is getting better. Every day I can stand up a little longer. Every day I can take a few more unaided steps. And although there were hours today when I was certain that the pain would spike into new agonizing territory, eventually it eased up and overall I’d say it was still a bit better than yesterday.

From here I will probably post weekly or monthly as I think of additional things to include. I’ve been considering a consolidated list of recovery tips for others headed for ACL surgery, so I’ll start working on that.

In the meantime, I know I only have a few dedicated current readers (hi mom), but this blog has already helped me to this point by giving me an outlet for my thoughts. As such I give my sincere thanks to those of you who encouraged me to start it in the first place. You know who you are.

And so it ends. My first week in the ACL reconstruction club. I’d like to ride off into the sunset now, but I’m still about 30 degrees short of being able to pedal so I’ll just keep my leg propped up here on the couch. I’ll post with more details as they occur…