2 Gimp Knees, Sore Shoulders and Armpits

Last Weds I went in for surgery on my bum right knee, but boy was I not prepared for it. I figured I'd be walking in the next couple days, skating in a month, at least ready to scrimmage by February. Ummm..... no.

Can I just say how awesome my anethesiologist was? He looked like Sam Elliott. Without the cowboy hat.










Those guys are really good at finding out what you're interested in, then asking you questions about it until you pass out. Everyone seemed really intrigued that I play roller derby, and surprised that they don't see more derby related injuries. Oh yeah, and I had to explain a couple dark bruises on my arms. I think they bought it :)

My symptoms were excess fluid around my kneecap, swelling/stiffness and occasional pain. So the dr told me that he was going to go in and drain the excess synovial fluid (synoviocentesis?), fish out excess chips of cartilage that the MRI reported missing from my femur (chondrectomy?), and possibly score the bone where the cartilage was missing to encourage scar tissue growth (microfracture). They did all of that, plus the condition of my cartilage was worse than expected so they cleaned up a ton of shredded cartilage from behind my kneecap and on the end of my femur (chondroplasty).

Here is the shredded cartilage behind my kneecap:

















And the yellow part is missing cartilage on my femur.















I thought this thing would be a breeze, and that I'd be back on skates in 4 weeks. I can't even walk on my own til 10 days after surgery! The 2 days after surgery I was on pain meds and felt ok enough to finish projects and go to SVRG's christmas party. Saturday I hit a wall and have been in bed since. My left knee aches from having all my weight on it, plus my shoulders and armpits ache from the crutches. And today I lost the cable remote and got pretty upset. Plus with christmas 4 days away I'm freakin out because I didn't get everything done and we're having family over on christmas. Note to everyone out there: Christmas is NOT a good time to recover from surgery.

Good news is that the dr says this was not caused by derby, since I had this before I started skating. She said this took a long time to develop. Anyway, it is feeling better today and I haven't taken pain meds since last night so that's a good sign. The vicodin makes me feel hung over so I prefer my knee's achiness to a yucky stomach.

At least I went out with a bang, the Red Red Holiday tournament on Dec 12 was SO. MUCH. FUN!!! I had girls from Sonoma, Sac City, Battle Born, Sacred and Central Coast on my team and they were all awesome.
http://jwcotting.smugmug.com/Roller-Derby/RedRed-Holiday/Orange-vs-Brown-12-Dec-2009/10636959_xM2wv#740440344_6tWJN-A-LB