ACL: Day 0 - reconstructing the ligaments on my knee

[Superpedro]

Thank you guys for all the comments. I will keep posting my progress as long as the suppers in this forum find it useful. So if you feel that is not doing the job anymore just write "stop this nonsense" :-)

Days 02-06

Day 02
To my surprise I’d slept with no pain whatsoever, the only weird stuff is that I had to sleep with my knee brace on. Now I’m not into kinky sex even when I asked my lovely wife to spoon me she didn’t put any resistance against touching my leg.

My favorite surf & motorbike shop — Deus ex machina — is opening a small shop in Williamsburg with an event in the afternoon which I would hate not to attend. I was feeling good enough to venture into the great outdoors, so after a lot of convincing my wife/nurse drove me over the bridge to the hipster land of Williamsburg.


I tried to reduce the painkillers both in quantity and number of pills, and it proven to be a bad idea. Had an uneventful afternoon travelling in and out of the Oxycodene’s stupor and icing my swollen knee.

Day 03
Good & Bad news. My wife had to travel back to Rome for work and she will be out for 2 1/2 weeks, and she was feeling guilty of leaving me on my own.


The good news is that I got lovely flowers from our studio manager at ustwo.com.

Day 06
Still alive after few days on my own. I’m walking/hopping every morning to get my flat white from bluebird cafe that is 3 blocks away from my apartment in East Village. I must say that is almost as painful in your arms as paddling out through lots of white water, at least I’m keeping up my paddle strength.

Today is a big day, I visited Dr Cohen to check my progress. Everything is going great, he was so surprise that I don’t have any pain and the best news is that I can take a shower.

6 days of minimum human contact is getting to me, I’m ready to go back tomorrow to work.

Tips:

• Ice is your friend, do it as many times as possible.
• Talcum powder is great to keep your hair/beard clean and less scratchy.
• Do the exercise that your surgeon recommends.
• Invite people over, talking is good.
• Invite people over, talking is good.
• Research for a new custom shape board

[PonoBill]

My approach to painkillers is, take all you need (up to prescribed max) to stay ahead of the pain and then get off them as quickly as possible. Oxy is nothing to mess with, though I have a hard time understanding what there is to that high that people enjoy. Not as bad as muscle relaxers.

Best of luck with the results, most people I know that have had ACL repair did very well past surgery. Lots of PT.

[surfafrica]

My approach to painkillers is, take all you need (up to prescribed max) to stay ahead of the pain and then get off them as quickly as possible. Oxy is nothing to mess with...

+1 on what Bill said on staying ahead of the pain.  Pain is a funny thing with long term injuries or surgeries.  The brain will actually dedicate more space to perceiving the pain as the pain persists.  So using pain meds early on in an injury or recovery (following doc's recommendations) will not only help with short-term relief, but might help you perceive less chronic pain down the road as the brain won't have had the chance to reinforce those pain pathways.

[robon]

I never came close to finishing my oxy prescriptions for either of my knee surgeries or broken limbs. Nasty, nasty stuff. More complications than benefits towards pain relief for me. Upset stomach, constipation, and it would help a bit for pain, but it's kinda like hippies and patchouli oil. You can still smell the BO and then you got that other smell too. I would be high as shit, but much of the pain was still there and I was sick. I found oxy to work better for an abscessed tooth than for my knee, and weed worked better than oxy. I had a full medicine cabinet full of oxy/percocets at one point.

The thing I found with ACL surgery and rehab is once you get past the first couple of weeks to a month, it goes to a different type of pain that you learn to work through. Gradually increasing your range of motion and muscle tone while the graft takes hold, and it's a matter of increasing your range of motion in small degrees every day within tolerable limits, but you learn to work with and through the pain threshold as you break through scar tissue and increase muscle tone and mobility.

[eastbound]

acute pain ==> oxy/opiods

chronic pain==> anything but oxy/opiods

terminal pain==>oxy/opiods

[mrbig]

Superpedro, All things considered it sounds like things are going well. I blew out my knee in 81- ACL, LCL, and MCL. PCL survived. The attempts at repairs back then were primitive to say the least including a full cast which often led to a frozen knee. Had two more surgeries to repair the repairs as it were.

The substitution of tendon from either a cadaver or transfer is a tremendous advancement which is why so many professional athletes as well as recreational guys make full and complete recoveries.

My only advice is to put the full time into rehab in order to fully restore strength to all of the supporting muscles, tendons, and other tissue. It is possible to do too much too soon which will not get you back any sooner!

My antique Lenox-Hill derotation brace is in a landfill. All of the non metal parts dissolved. Looked like a strange
dinosaur skeleton. Demerol was the stuff they gave me back then. Took it for a while and stopped. Very glad oxy wasn't around as it is absurdly addictive.

I send you prayers and blessings for a full and complete recovery!

[Superpedro]

Thank you guys for all the comments. I will keep posting my progress as long as the suppers in this forum find it useful. So if you feel that is not doing the job anymore just write "stop this nonsense" :-)

Week 02 — Back to work.


First day back at work since the surgery… Late November and still on boardies and sandals perfect dress code for winter in New York!

I’ve encountered my first barrier… getting to work is not only hard, but expensive. I’ve planned to catch an Uber to work, but the morning rush hour means 2.5x surge charge, so change of plans yellow taxi it is. Waiting outside for 15 minutes and I’m starting to question my summer outfit ’cause I’m getting a bit cold!

So far everybody is super helpful at work, I got people to do a coffee for me carrying my laptop to my next meeting… I wonder how long this is going to last!

I’m taking over one of our sofas in the studio as my new desk… I really recommend getting the ikea laptop tables makes working from the sofa a pleasure.



One thing that I wasn’t counting on is how much “walking” I do in the studio going from meeting to meeting. I was exhausted by the end of the day.

1st Physiotherapy Session

OMG… it is almost like torture! On the other hand, I’m very lucky that my health insurance covers up to 60 sessions per year… thanks ustwo.com!

The session last around 45 minutes, starting with taking some measurements follow by a very painful massage on my calf and tight. The next step was the worst… My therapist started bending my knee while I’m laying on my back and I really felt that the screws holding my new ligament were about to get ripped from my knee.


“Let go” my therapist told me and obviously I was fighting back while my knee was bent no more than a few degrees. She then changed to stand on a small stool putting her hands on both sides of my knee and with all her weight she started to push down over extending my knee. This was by far the most painful and scary part of the ACL reconstruction so far.

Eventually, I came out of their office with a list of exercises to do at home and I have to come to therapy 3 times a week.
The rest of the week went without any surprises, but I must admit that I wish I have stayed at home for 2 weeks, I was exhausted and with a bit of pain at the end of every day!

Tips

• Stay as long as you can at home in the beginning to recover fully
• Get a small backpack or tote bag to carry stuff around while on crutches
• Keep couple of ice-packs in the fridge to keep down your swollen knee
• Getting to work is expensive by taxi in NYC!
  
• Don’t skip your exercises
  
  • Try to go as much as possible to physio
  
  You can follow this also on:
  
  https://medium.com/@superpedro/acl-reconstruction-old-man-s-diary-8993ef85f96a#.51jkgyktu

[Bulky]

Bringing back a lot of memories and I recognize the uniform.  As I was completing my summer/fall of rehab, one of my staff came in at Halloween dressed in cargo shorts, sandals and crutches.  Pretty good uniform--though I haven't been able to maintain it, I have gone more casual since then.

I remember those therapy sessions and the pain.  Makes a good PT invaluable as mine seemed to know the difference between good pain and bad pain.  After dealing with the injury, there was a mental pain response to push through.  You get used to certain motions hurting and you reflexively resist them.  Nothing more fun than the ice/heat session at the end.  That became a great reward! 

Hang in there!

[Califoilia]

Eventually, I came out of their office with a list of exercises to do at home and I have to come to therapy 3 times a week.
The rest of the week went without any surprises, but I must admit that I wish I have stayed at home for 2 weeks, I was exhausted and with a bit of pain at the end of every day!

Tips

• Stay as long as you can at home in the beginning to recover fully
• Get a small backpack or tote bag to carry stuff around while on crutches
• Keep couple of ice-packs in the fridge to keep down your swollen knee
• Getting to work is expensive by taxi in NYC!
  
• Don’t skip your exercises
  
  • Try to go as much as possible to physio

Can't emphasize the bold enough....

I was going stir crazy to home, and thought getting "back to work" (actually paperwork duty at the FD) would get my mind on something else other than the boredom I was unsuccessfully dealing with at home.....bad idea for sure.

By the end of the "work" day, and not being able to elevate my knee.....caused it swell up like a volleyball, was painful as hell, and slowed me down the next morning at PT, because the swelling from the day before hadn't subsided completely.

Since it was a worker's comp injury, once I was "released for modified work duty", I couldn't go back to "off work" to just mend, and complete my PT.  I really do believe that this whole thing slowed down my recovery time, and didn't get me back to full duty as fast as I would have, had I just focused on rest, PT, and healing.  Btw, choose your docs/surgeons wisely before hand...don't go to one who unbeknownst to you, also works for the workers comp administrators of your employer. 

SP, not sure how recumbent you can get at work on that sofa, or if you can get your leg up on that coffee table in the picture, but I too was pretty much in that same position as you in that picture for the full day....and looking back, wished I could have somehow gotten my leg elevated to whatever degree....instead of having it angled down like that, with the fluids having a much harder time circulating/draining out of it, and slowing the whole process down IMO.

Best of luck to a speedy recovery, and full recovery.

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[balance_fit]

Superpedro

Thanks for posting, in exquisite detail, your experiences. Recovery is a process, one which needs constant feedback regarding progress. This feedback sometimes gets clouded by pain, functional limitations and medications. But, even in the midst of caos, there is progress going on, it just doesn't become too evident.

You will show improvement in range of motion, in the next measurement. On this stage, work hard on regaining full extension, and flexion, on that knee. And use pain management modalities as prescribed. Pain inhibits full muscular action and makes PT harder, compromising results.

Wake up call for sleeping muscles, coming soon !

Keep posting, we're following.

Be well