knee

Update From Adrienne,

Well, we’re home from the hospital and Josh is sound asleep. Everything went well. Dr. Jackson said it turned out that he didn’t have a meniscal tear after all. It seemed like he attributed the pain mostly to how far off Josh’s knee was tracking, which left him shaking his head. It was pretty far off, apparently. I’ll attach the pictures he gave us in case you want to see (don’t worry, it’s not too gross. Not that some of you would care, but I’m just taking precautions!) So he cut a ligament on the outside of Josh’s knee with the idea that it would quit pulling the bone towards the outside and allow it to track normally. He also shaved out a bunch of scar tissue, and removed what he called a “redundancy” of tissue. Overall, it was a success.

When they let me in to see Josh he was doing pretty well (except for his extreme annoyance at the size of the tiny and short bed to which he’d been relegated). He was groggy and his knee hurt, none of which was surprising. After half an hour they gave him Demerol in his IV and some Lortab to help the pain as well, and then a few minutes later he refused the wheelchair he was offered and walked out to the car (typical Josh style). He’s supposed to keep ice on it for a while and keep it elevated for about 72 hours, but they don’t otherwise restrict his movement. I predict he’ll be e-mailing you all himself after not too long; I’m just going to let him sleep as long as he can now. He’ll be going to physical therapy starting tomorrow, and he’ll check back with Dr. Jackson on Friday to make sure he’s healing up right. But everything looks good!

Josh here,

I am feeling pretty good, though anyone who has been shot up with demoral and taken a couple of Lortabs would feel pretty good. Only thing that hurts right now is my throat. I guess they put a tube down it for anesthesia. It is actually darn sore. My knee just feels slightly achy.

I start physical therapy tomorrow afternoon. I am sure that will feel great. It wasn’t really that bad at all. The thing that bothered me the most was the super-short beds. My feet hung off and it hurt my knees (even the “good” one), and was just really uncomfortable. Actually the thing that bothered me the most must have been the oxygen mask, because the first thing I remember was a blurry guy jobbing over to me and saying, “Looks like he doesn’t like the mask!”. It took me a second to realize that I was pulling it off.

The other funny memory I have is from the pre-op. They gave me, what the anesthetist called, “happy juice”. Just a shot to make you calm while you wait. I wasn’t nervous to start with, but that stuff kept making me laugh. Adrienne and I had been watching a show about bear research the night before, and they were talking about shooting bears with tranquilizer darts. For some reason I kept picturing myself as a bear they were trying to tranquilize and it would make me laugh out load. I have no idea why it was so funny, but I just kept thinking about running down the hall yelling, “it didn’t work!” and them trying to shoot me with a dart. Yeah, I know. But at the time it was the funniest thing I had ever thought of.

Josh