okay, it's been a while

I think I mentioned in my last couple of posts that my knee had been acting up. Well, that flare-up never really ended, and it got to the point where the pain was keeping me up at night. My doc tried a series of injections with a drug meant to lubricate the joint, but that didn't seem to help. My knee actually began popping more frequently (and painfully) after the injections. After exhausting all my other options, I ended up having surgery.

It's been three days since the surgery, and it's not feeling too bad right now. I can even walk on it already. My doc has prescribed a very aggressive rehab schedule - 8-12 hours a day on a CPM (or, as I call it, the leg-bendy machine), physical therapy 5 days a week (starting tomorrow), and 30 mins/day on the exercise bike (also starting tomorrow). My doc fixes up all the Seahawks, so I guess I shouldn't be surprised that he expects his patients to spend lots of time doing rehab.

Prior to surgery, my doc wasn't totally sure what he would see in my joint. The affected area was mostly behind my kneecap, which is a notoriously difficult area to see on MRIs and X-rays. During surgery, my doc found the cartilage behind my kneecap to have a few tears, which he expected. He smoothed it out, but evidently he had to walk a thin line - he didn't want to trim away too much, because I'm running a little low on healthy cartilage at this point. He also found and trimmed a few minor meniscus tears (on both sides of the knee, if I understood him correctly). The biggest problem he found was a layer of unhealthy tissue over the hole on the bottom of my femur where the rod went in (to fix my femur fracture). I had the rod removed back in 2006, but the hole never healed properly. The tissue that had formed was covering just the bottom of the bone. It was really soft and started flaking away when the doc touched it. Left to its own devices, the tissue would probably flake off into the joint (and it might have started doing that already). The doc cleaned out the bad tissue and had to make a quick decision to plug the bone with a cadaver bone graft. Luckily the plug went in a part of the bone that doesn't bear weight, so like I said, I can walk on it already.

So anyway, that was surgery. One of my physical therapists observed the surgery, which is pretty cool. I haven't talked to her yet, but I'm sure she'll have lots to tell me.

My parents and one of my uncles came for a few days to help me out. We went to the Mariners game the night before my surgery (minus my uncle, who hadn't arrived yet). The Mariners actually won! And we saw Ken Griffey, Jr. hit his 400th home run with the Mariners. Pretty sweet.

Everyone left this morning, and now it's back to school. I have a weird schedule this quarter. I just realized week four of the quarter starts tomorrow, which means the quarter is almost half done already. I'm in one seminar and in percussion ensemble, and I'm taking thesis credits. I only have to be on campus two days a week, at most. I missed a rehearsal due to surgery, and I'll probably miss the one this week, but I won't miss any seminar meetings. I'm not sure if I'll be able to finish my thesis stuff by the end of the quarter, so I might not finish my masters until December. That's not really a big deal, since I'm planning on staying at UW for my PhD. It would be nice to get everything wrapped up soon, but right now rehab is more important.

Since I'm finally writing on here, I should post some Cabo photos. I went on vacation a couple weeks ago with the boyfriend, his family, and some friends. Here are some photos (the rest are on Facebook). :)