Lovely Fortnight

Posted on 2005/12/16 21:48:33 (December 2005).

[30th November - 16th December]

It has been a very lovely fortnight for me, and by the looks of things, there are strong chances that is not finished here.

As anticipated below, I have had my cruciate ligament surgery, after a football injury suffered last June.
The first thing that springs to mind is the fact that I have walked into the hospital with my two legs, perfectly holding me up, and I eventually got out 2 days afterwards on crutches in a terrible pain, my right leg totally useless...

The day of the surgery was quite fast, got in very early and was sent to the op-room extremely quickly, after an injection of pre-anaesthetic. Before the operation started I was injected the real anaesthetic right in the lower section of my spine (quite painful), and I was inserted a needle on the front side of my hand where the IV had to be attached.

The surgery itself was quite fast, 1 hour and 10 minutes, when I was ready to be done, the doc came in and checked the numb knee. After the control he said something like "Hey, but this knee is good! You sure you want to be done?".
This was the first (of a long list)of shocks, the guy 2 months earlier insisted that I had to get the surgery because the knee was ok-ish, but still unstable.
I said that since I was there he might as well take a look through the antroscopy machine...

The ligament was indeed badly damaged so we all decided it was time to get going. I recall looking at the surgery on a screen, didn't feel a thing all the time.
The first day was rather strange, there were 4 people in our room, of course we were awake after the operation so we chatted a lot, waiting for the anaesthetic to subdue. The fact that you cannot feel anything below the waist is weird but in a couple of hours all comes back to life (including family jewels), together with the first attacks of pain.

We were not feeded, only water allowed, mostly because you cannot get off the bed as there is a tube sticking from the knee draining excess blood. The first night was AWFUL, not because of the knee, but because the idiotic assistant gave me a bandage that was too tight, and I could not sleep for the pain all night... The result was that my right foot and leg had quite a lot of blisters after that night!

Unfortunately the sleep issue would be something that will drag into this account for quite some time...

In the morning I got all the bandages removed, and I soon was home after a tragic trip in the car, where the knee would return a stab of pain for every hole in the road that we drove above.

I don't have many memories of the first day home, it was quite blurry and painful. The same applies to all the other days the knee started to swell quite a lot, this prevented me from starting rehab straight away.
At night the leg seems to have a life of its own, I have tried a gazzillion different types of painkillers, sleeping tabs and antiinflammatory medicines, but so far I have had a very bad luck with them.
Generally I try to go to bed late (around 11-ish, which is extremely early for my pre-surgery standards) then I wake up at 1-ish, go to the kitchen to get some ice and apply it on the leg.
Then around 1,40-ish I try to get to sleep again. If I am lucky I wake up around 5-ish, get some more ice and bide my time till 7.
Usually from 7 to 9 in the morning I manage to sleep, don't know why, but it seems that the pain threshold (very low during the night) automatically gets more relaxed and I can actually sleep.

Needless to say that 14 days (at the time of writing) of this is nerve wracking. I feel really bad, but since during the day I hardly do anything I don't feel that tired.

The first two weeks featured a nasty bruise under my thight, this was quite painful and crap, mostly because for two weeks sitting was IMPOSSIBLE. This means eating in 5 minutes, and most dangerously, not being able to do any work or games on the computer.
I could watch TV from the sofa.
This was also a terrible torture. It has been more than 10 years that I didn't watch TV apart from the news and football, being forced to watch it made me realize how bad Italian TV is. Another experience that I hardly needed!
This made me think that there must be people WILLINGLY watching all this crap. By the looks of it there are quite a lot of them I am afraid...

I had to undergo a series of injections (10 to be precise), I hate needles but they had to be done so after getting my mother, my father to try them on me (you would think that doctors can make an injection), Renzo, my mother's "boyfriend", was elected official nurse for the rest of the course as he's really good at making them.
At the same time I was on an antibiotics course, an a couple more medicines that I now forgot what they do.

My friends came to visit, first Matteo, then Simone, Stefano and Francesco. It was good to see someone as the days are rather dull when you just sit on a sofa doing nothing.

On Monday the 10th I went to see the doc again, the knee was quite big and he decided to drain all the liquid with yet another injection. I couldn't believe that there was so much blood around, but at the end the knee did look like the other, and I was feeling a lot better.
My spirit was very high until the morning after, when I saw that yet more liquid was formed and the knee looked again like Frankenstein's knee.
The rehab-responsible said that there is nothing to do about it, it is a natural defence, it will go away in time.

Patience.

I have heard this word a lot during these two weeks, it's getting tiresome to hear people telling you that it will go away sooner or later that I have to be patient and wait for its course to be done with.
I know that they are perfectly right, but it's a small consolation when you are up at 2 in the night for the 14th day in a raw not remembering how a good night sleep feels like...

Ok that's a concentrated tale, from now on I can get back to the normal day-by-day story mode. I missed writing on the blog it takes away a lot of worries for me, and it helps in putting things in prospective, evaluating them better.

Well Lox, not much else I can say other than this sounds like it as been an utterly, utterly horrible time for you! I really feel for you mate!

Posted by John at 2005/12/17 14:35:09.

What's all the fuss about ? You're such a cry-baby...

Posted by Sheri a.k.a. Ze Mean Belgian Frog at 2005/12/17 18:52:35.

Sissy, sissy, sissy...

Posted by Sheri a.k.a. Ze Mean Belgian Frog at 2005/12/17 18:53:32.

Moooommyyyy, it huuuuuurts....

Posted by Sheri a.k.a. Ze Mean Belgian Frog at 2005/12/17 18:54:17.

No, seriously, I sympathize.

Posted by Sheri at 2005/12/17 18:55:35.

Thanks guys! Well I am a bit of a sissy-whingy-curly-crybaby (memories of Radstock), but this time I can ensure that it has been quite bad... :( Oh well we'll see what happens..

Posted by Lox at 2005/12/17 20:52:38.

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