Knee Surgery Recovery

I’ve been watching the snow come down all day. It’s not a hard snow, just a steady stream of fat flakes drifting diagonally through the air and piling up in a fluffly white ground cover. This is the same storm that caused blizzards to the south and west of Chicago. Here, though, just a nice, steady snowfall.

Here inside, where it’s warm, I have been marvelling at the ability of the human body to withstand and recover from trauma. I had knee surgery on Dec. 3. I tore the anterior cruciate ligament in my right knee this past spring, and the pain and discomfort were to the point where not having surgery wasn't a good long-term option. Sometimes the knee would just wobble, or nearly give out, walking down stairs or stepping off a curb. There were other sharp pains that I later learned were associated with tears in my meniscus. Occasionally the knee felt like it was on the verge of locking up, with shooting, pinpoint pain somewhere deep inside. When that happened, I would shake my knee from side to side, which seemed to help. I learned later the shooting pain was from a flap of meniscal tissue that would make its way into places it shouldn't. The shaking often moved the flap back into place. Again, not a good long-term solution.

During the week after the surgery, my knee looked and felt like the doctor had inserted a tiny mixer and flipped the switch to "whip." Obviously the surgery was much more intricate than that. The doctor replaced the ACL with a ligament from a cadaver and trimmed the torn pieces of meniscus. As the knee has healed I give the doctor a great amount of credit with conducting a skillful procedure that has improved quickly; the word I have used repeatedly is: exponential. Every day starting on the day the doctor removed the Ace bandage and told me I didn't need a brace, the thing has experienced more flexibility, less pain and less swelling than the day before. Today I experienced a huge breakthrough during a hamstring stretching exercise wherein I lay on my stomach on the bed with the edge of the mattress about mid-thigh. After five minutes, as I slid off the bed, my right knee popped. There was initial pain, but then huge relief. Must have broken through some scar tissue or something, because it feels better today than even some days pre-surgery.

Here are two photos, one taken six days after surgery and one taken today, 17 days later.

My right knee still looks bad, still swollen and the incisions are still healing. There's also not a lot of definition. When your leg is basically hanging on your body for two weeks, not doing any work, that's what happens. The left leg is starting to get agitated. It's tired of doing all the work. "A little help, here!" I can hear it saying to the right.

If today is any indication, help is on the way.