October 25, 2015
This week I had surgery on my right knee. I had never had
a surgery before, nor had I ever had an IV before. I had never even been
to the hospital for myself before so it was quite the experience. In
March of this year, I was playing on a flag football league as a receiver and
caught the ball heading toward the sideline in one of the games. As I
planted my right foot and turned up the field, I was hit from the side by the
defender. I felt a pop in my knee and it became swollen for several days.
I iced it and stayed off it for a while and went back to playing sports.
I was fine until my knee started locking when it was bent and I wasn’t able to
straighten my leg. It was very painful. It popped out several times
playing basketball when I would get fouled and fall down on my right
side. I researched online and everything I read made it sound like I had
a tear in my meniscus. I decided to get an MRI in July to get it checked
out. The MRI came back and the radiologist said they didn’t see anything
wrong, no tears. I knew there was something wrong so I got referred to an
orthopedic specialists, Matt Hansen, who happened to be Bryant’s basketball
coach in the spring when I helped coach Bryant’s team. He looked at the
MRI results and couldn’t see anything either but based on my symptoms, he
recommended getting a Contrast MRI where they shoot your knee full of a
contrast fluid that helps the MRI images be more clear. So after the 2nd MRI, they found the tear that we had
suspected was there.
The doctor said I had 2 options for surgery as the tear would never heal
itself. One option would be to do a meniscectomy (remove the meniscus on
the side that was torn). This would give me a fast recovery and I could
go back to normal activity but sometime after about 10-20 years, arthritis
would set in with the bone rubbing on bone and I would be done being
active. The 2nd option
was to repair the torn meniscus with sutures which would be a much longer
recovery time but would give me a chance to get back to normal activity.
It had about a 70% chance of success since the meniscus doesn’t get much blood
flow and its hard for that area to heal once the sutures are put in. He
recommended this option because he knew how active I was so I decided to go
with the repair option. I then found out it was going to be about 10
weeks of recovery and Mindy and I have our 15th anniversary trip to Cancun already
planned and paid for at the end of December. I decided to get it out of
the way as quickly as possible. We were going to Mexico the next week and
I had a business trip in Dallas the week after that so I set the surgery for
Oct 20th.
It was set at the Arizona Joint and Spine Hospital on Greenfield and
Baseline. We got there and the nurse helping me was Sister Webb who was
in our Saratoga ward and originally in our Elliot ward when my family lived in
Circle G Ranches in Gilbert. She still lives on Linda Lane there.
Anyway, she took me back and I put on the nice hospital gown and she took me to
a bed to be prepped for surgery. At this point I was still not sure how
they were going to knock me out, if it was going to be gas or through an IV (I
was hoping to either not need an IV or be gassed before having an IV put
in). This question was answered when she told me she was going to get my
IV started in my hand. She stuck it in there which was pretty
painful. I don’t like needles at all. I don’t mind the pain but the
thought of something sticking into my body and someone either pumping something
in or sucking something out just does not sit well with me at all. I
started to feel tingly all over my body and sick to my stomach and was getting
ready to pass out. This was similar to how I felt after Tilly was born
when I needed smelling salts but this time it seemed worse and I never got to
the unresponsive state. The nurse got me a cold wet towel to put on my
forehead and after a few minutes of torture and several prayers, I felt a
little better. She brought Mindy and Tilly back to sit with me for a while
which was nice. When we were first planning to go to the surgery, I told
Mindy to just to drop me off at the hospital and I could call her when I was
done so she could pick me up. She said she would rather be there with me
which I really appreciated after getting in there.
The anesthesiologist came in and said they were going to do a nerve block in my
thigh that would help the pain later below in the knee. So I got another
needle stuck down in my leg. Awesome. They said they were pumping
some kind of sedative through the IV that would make me not really care what
was going on when they injected the nerve block. I didn’t really notice
being sedated and still felt the needle and injection. After that they
wheeled me to the operating room and I was there for about 30 seconds when they
started the “good stuff” in my IV and after putting on an oxygen mask, I
remember taking about 2 or 3 breaths and I was gone. I woke up a couple
hours later in the recovery room trying to shake off the sedation. It was
a pretty weird feeling. After I came to the realization of the pain set
in and it felt like someone had shoved a basketball inside of my knee. My
hip was pretty sore as well since they sucked out 16 ccs of bone marrow out of
my hip bone to inject into my knee to help the healing process (I was glad this
part happened while I was out). There were 3 holes stitched up in my knee
where they had stuck the camera and tools in for the arthroscopy. They
pumped in some pain killer into the IV and it felt a little better. My
wife came back and had just talked to Dr Hansen. He said the surgery went
as well as could be expected and while they were in fixing the Lateral Meniscus
(outside knee) they found another tear on the Medial meniscus (inside knee) so
they were able to repair that one as well. They wrote a prescription for
Hydrocodone and released me to go home. I had a brace on from my ankle up
to my thigh and it was locked in place so my leg had to stay perfectly
straight. It was a rough ride home.
I took the pain killers and didn’t sleep much that night. I usually sleep
on my side or stomach so being on my back was hard and I kept waking up trying
turn over and realizing I couldn’t. The pain was pretty bad the first
couple days but on Friday 3 days after surgery, I was completely off the pain
killers. The only thing I take is aspirin to help my blood stay thin to
prevent clotting. I am on crutches for 6 weeks and will have the brace on
for about 10 weeks. I have already been challenged several times to play
one on one basketball. I have been working from home and I made it to
Spencer’s playoff football game Thursday night, Bryant’s soccer game
yesterday, out on a date with Mindy last night, to church today, and even went
home teaching this evening. I am a bit worn out. I am not used to
other people having to carry things for me, or help me put on my shoes or
opening doors for me. It’s going to be a long six weeks.
-Chad
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