another acl/patellar graft story

[up an down]

i had surgery this morning for my right acl which was completely torn march 29th while out of bounds via snowcat at monarch....
doc called me after i got home and told me it went very well. although he did have to "smooth out some meniscus damage" in addition to doing the graft. he gave me a paincare 3000,
which is a drip medication device with a small tube that goes
into the knee and delivers a pain killer directly to the surgery area. whoever wrote the name of the drug on the affixed label has worse penmanship than even i do! :p i am not sure,but i think it reads murceine o. i doubt if i am reading it correctly , maybe one
of you med biz guys knows what it is. it was described to me as a numbing agent, just like a dentist uses. whatever it is it is not a narcotic, but so far i have very little pain. i got a prescription for generic vicodin, i guess i will fill it
after the pain care is empty, which is supposed to be about 48 hours. anyway, i give it 2 big thumbs up so far........ i also have a chilled water wrap/cooler with an electric motor, very nice except for no on/off switch. i have to unplug it to turn it off. so i plugged it into a switched power strip/extension cord to solve that inconvenience... i feel pretty good actually, no nausea or dizziness at all... i doubt if i will have anything new to post, since truth, basom/ kellie and mtn. man have been such a great source of info.. thanks guys/gals!!!! :yourock: ,but even so i will probably post an update once in a while once i start rehab.

[truth]

Fill that scrip soon. You'll be suprised how bad it'll hurt once the good drugs from the surgery wear off. Pump that calf and flex that quad starting now bro. Good luck and if ya have any questions ask em...more than likely someone here has the answer.

[Mtn Man]

Fill that scrip soon. You'll be suprised how bad it'll hurt once the good drugs from the surgery wear off. Pump that calf and flex that quad starting now bro. Good luck and if ya have any questions ask em...more than likely someone here has the answer.

Agreed, don't wait for the drug to wear off before filling the script. The first few days are pretty rough without pain killers, so you want it there at the ready. Definitely start the gas pedal pumps, hamstring, and quad clenching exercises. This will keep blood clots from happening. I was told to do 50 gas pumps AN HOUR on both calves, and I was pretty religious with it, especially after the story seen here about blood clots.

Good luck and welcome to rehab!

B)

[Kellie]

Welcome to the PT graft club! I guess you can tell who spends time in Gimp Central basis the first 3 posts :D

The first week is pretty rough, but it definitely gets better from there - best of luck, and keep us posted . . . it's fun to watch everyone progress :)

[Vinman]

iof you med biz guys knows what it is.

Marcaine (sp?) basically a non-narcotic numbing agent.

[spanky]

heal up fast man. I need people to video at the next summit :D

[up an down]

2 weeks post op for me and i am feeling pretty good. i am doing the same execises as have already been detailed by other posters..... the only thing i have to add to the general knowledge is what happened to me on day and night 2 post op..... once again i have to give 2 huge thumbs up to the pain pump i was using. i cannot recomend it highly enough.. HOWEVER, i let myself get way to confident because of my lack of pain on day 2 and i was up on my feet a lot, makeing lunch, going downstairs to use the pc, getting ice. and other odds and ends, when my knee and leg started to hurt for the first time post op. i took a good look at my foot and could see it had swollen quite a bit. i still had no pain in the knee, but started to get real uncomfortable with pain from my upper thigh all the way to the toes.. i got back in bed, raised my leg up, and hoped for the best , but the pain continued to get worse, so i took 2 5 milligram pills of generic vicodin, and gritted my teeth for about 30 minutes till the pills started working enough that i didn't feel like whimpering constantly. about 4 hours after that i took another before i tried to get to sleep. it took about 36 hours of near constant leg elevation to get the swelling reduced to where it was before i was prancing around like an idiot.... the side effects from the vicodin were bad for me. no appetite at all. dizziness, lightheadedness, constipation, and i had to piss every couple hours.. the worst time was night 2 when i went to the bathroom early morning, barely made it wobbling on my crutches in the dark. pissed, then turned to go back to bed, and i was so dizzy i fell backwards into the wall, slid down onto a register ( a direct hit with my ass which crushed the little louvers ) and i could not get up. the thump woke up my wife, she said she spoke to me and my eyes were rolling back into my head, i don't think i even heard her voice.. she called 911, and after a great/fast response the emts' talked to me a lot and i persuaded them i was ok, that i just needed some help to get upright :D i think it helped that i knew one of them, and they let me stay home. after that i told myself no more vicodin. it took another 48 hours for the dizziness to vanish completely and to be able to take a crap and feel like eating. the pain pump was empty, and i did have pain whenever i moved, sometimes sharp pain, but each day it got less painfull.. today is day 14 and i have very little to no pain except when i exercise there is some pain, but it is managable and when i rest it dissapears.
.... so if there is any lesson to be learned from my experience i guess it is don't get too active the first few days post op, even if you feel great..... if you can cut down or avoid painkillers you will feel pain in the knee , but the rest of you will feel a hell of a lot better. or maybe i am too sensitive to opiates :D

[Kellie]

Damn, what an "adventure!" :eek: Glad to hear it worked out okay in the end . . . and a good lesson for everyone :)

[up an down]

day 22 post op

yesterday at pt i was able to spin the bike pedals all the way around, fowards and backwards... kinda surprised it came so early, but i have been pretty active with walking the past 6 days and i guess the fluid in the knee is finally started to be reabsorbed. i have been walking 1 1/2 - 2 miles ( 1/2-3/4 of which i do backwards ) each day for the past 5 days so maybe the increased metabolic activity is what has finally made a noticable difference reducing the amount of swelling??

i use a brace whenever i walk, just a simple "knee cage" type in case i have a knee collapse the doc told me the brace should be more than adequate to avoid injury.

1st post op checkup with doc is tomorrow, and i am tempted to ask him to drain my knee to speed up things even more, but then i am sure i would be very tempted to overwork it. anyway so far so good with recovery, therapist says i will be doing some squats friday.

[up an down]

day 29 post op

had some tougher rehab sessions the past week. it felt pretty good, except for leg extensions.... my patellar tendon is weak and sore. VERY difficult to do 2 sets of 10 leg extensions (sitting on a table/chair and slowly swinging the leg out straight) thank god i did them after some squats..... walking up steps feels fine, going down is still slow tho and if there is a railing i use it. i took a ride on my bike today and that felt great! just back and forth on the street so that i wouldn't be far from home if i had a problem, and the total length was only about 3/4 mile but it really loosened up the knee. i could walk noticably faster afterwards. more biking , less walking for me i think, at least for a while.

[Kellie]

more biking , less walking for me i think, at least for a while.

Aint that the truth!

[Mtn Man]

Man, I'm on the slow bus. I'm only getting backwards turns on the bike with a lot of pain at 6 weeks post op. You guys are lucky. Walking a mile or two makes my leg blow up fairly big too. Granted, my doc and PT guy says my case is a lot worse than most, but I'm just jealous when I see other people's results.

C'est la vie, just gotta roll with it. Sounds like you're on the fast track to recovery! Sorry to hear about the mishap with the vics, I always just got a slight buzz from them. Glad to see you doing much better!

B)

[up an down]

Man, I'm on the slow bus. I'm only getting backwards turns on the bike with a lot of pain at 6 weeks post op. You guys are lucky. Walking a mile or two makes my leg blow up fairly big too. Granted, my doc and PT guy says my case is a lot worse than most, but I'm just jealous when I see other people's results.

C'est la vie, just gotta roll with it. Sounds like you're on the fast track to recovery! Sorry to hear about the mishap with the vics, I always just got a slight buzz from them. Glad to see you doing much better!

B)
i did have much less damage (very slight meniscus and the acl tear) than you, so my bus had a big head start :biggrin: keep on rollin man, your're getting there :)

[up an down]

i skied today (just for 3 hours) for the first time since being injured. groomers at chestnut mountain here in flatland, so i didn't bother using the cheap brace i have.
no pain, no swelling, and everything felt good, even when holding an edge on icy spots.
the only time i felt anything bad was when the leg was fully extended at the finish of a skating push. if i used full strength the momentum and weight of the ski and boot seemed to stretch/extend the knee just enough to feel a bit uncomfortable for a half second. but, all in all a good day.:smile:

[fineline]

congrats up and down! I remember my first day skiing after that op was really scary and sketchy. But 2 weeks later it was getting back to normal. Good luck!

[sbbeckett]

In about five days I'm in for my last ACL appointment, the six-month follow-up. I also had a patellar graft, but I tore my ACL seven or eight years ago. Thus, in a few weeks, I should be on the sticks for thefirst time since then. Pretty nervous about it, although the pt went great. That "full extension" sensation that Up and Down talked mentioned is about the only thing I'm worried about. I can feel that in my workouts.

Anyway, glad to know yet one more has reached full recovery. Hopefully I'll be joining soon.

[mtnbikerskierchick]

I had ACL/patellar graft a number of years ago and I remember skiing my first day after the surgery... only 4 months after surgery. It hurt like hell, more than you are describing. My coach told me that it would hurt all season, but the next season it would be back to normal. I was in denial of that, but she was right. My knee did hurt all season (I had surgery in mid-June), but the following season I realized the pleasure of not skiing in pain. What I'm trying to tell you is that if it hurts this season, deal with it, and enjoy skiing as much as you can. And there is hope... you won't be in pain next season :)

[sbbeckett]

Wow, four months? I've heard of some docs clearing people to ski that early, but personally I never could have done it. My leg was still too weak and atrophied at that point. Congrats on being a p.t. animal.

[frozenwater]

I have a hamstring graft & some fairly major miniscus repair performed by Dr. Rorck (SP?)- Doc for the US ski team, guy who did most of the athletes I know who really need thier knee done right.
This was the third PT session, I was kind of dissapointed with the first two, just simple leg slides, hamstring flexs, and wierd electro shock to the muscle shit.

So I told em let's step it up. He set me on the stationary bike and said that I wouldn't be able to make a full pedal, but let's see how far I can go. I asked if I could hurt myself if I went full cycle and he let me know there was no way, but I just wouldn't have the stretch - to much swelling, & such.

So I was all "fuck that" and spun that bastard around. 17 minutes later and 4.2 further he made me stop. Moved on to this major stretch machine, leg lifts etc.

I have virtually no pain no, but do if I am on it for more than like an hour. I have to walk with crutches due the the miniscus repair, but otherwise life is really seeming pretty good. Hell I think I might come out of this stronger than ever.