Kneesy Does It – The Finale

On Monday morning I went back to Broadgreen Hospital to have my post-operative knee examination. Arriving on time, as always, I sat in the packed waiting room of the Orthopedics department just like all the other cattle and like all the times before.

As time ticked by I heard a few people quietly complain amongst themselves that their appointment had been at ten past eleven and they hadn’t been seen yet. My own appointment had also been ten past eleven and I imagine that everybody there had been told to turn up at ten past eleven, too. I really cant think of too many reasons why they do this, but by now I was used to it, so I stuck one ear-bud in and listened to music while I waited.

When my name was called I was looking forward to seeing my specialist, Mr Taylor, again. I’m not sure why, but to me he just seems like a really nice guy and had always been patient and polite with me on each of my appointments. Unfortunately, due to the sheer volume of other people there, I didn’t get to see Mr Taylor. Instead his assistant and a medical student came to talk to me when I was finally in an examination room.

The assistant lady was pleasant enough, and explained what had been done during my operation. Sounded gross to me – especially the bit about shaving under my knee cap and “trimming the raggedy bit off of the fatty pad which had been catching in my knee joint.” Delightful stuff. Even more cringe-worthy was “your ACL is in good shape – we put an instrument round that and gave it a pull about to check.”

😮

Aside from all the grim sounding stuff, the assistant lady assured me that my knee was in really good condition now and I’d be able to go back to doing all of the sporty activities I wanted to within a couple of months. This was comforting to hear, but my knee feels so unsteady at times that I’m going to avoid jumping (!) into anything too strenuous for a wee while yet.

After all was said and done I was given a form to hand to reception which said I was discharged. This was nice in a way, because it felt like I was closing the chapter on the whole knee saga, but I suppose time will tell if that’s the case.

The following night I decided to see if the assistant lady wasn’t just pulling my leg (I just cant help myself) and went to the gym for the first time since before my operation. Fifteen minutes on the waggley stick machine felt pretty good – I did keep the resistance pretty low, though. However, today my knee is hurting more than it has in a week, so that suggests to me that I’m not out of the woods yet. It’s probably best to go with my original tack and take it slow and steady.

I’m hoping that as soon as the weather improves, and if I’m staying at my mum’s, I’ll be able to go along and use the skate ramp again. That’ll be a really gentle way of building up the leg muscles without any impact should I be short of a waggley stick machine in that neck of the woods. 🙂