For auld lang syne

Well, the new year is almost upon me and I've managed to do something to my knee or something as happened to my knee. When I awoke yesterday I noticed my knee was hurting down in the lower right quadrant. It's tender to the touch, yet not swollen, and also pulled by only certain motions of my leg and knee. I had one of the PTs check it out this afternoon and he put it through a wide array of pulling and pushing, moving and bending to isolate what did and didn't cause it to cause to stabbing pain I was feeling. He was not sure what it was, so the head PT is going to have to check on it Friday when I come for my appointment. On the good side, it's on the medial (inside) side, so it's not something like my lateral meniscus has torn again. I certainly hope and pray that it is nothing serious because the last thing I want is for someone to have to go back in and fix something. Heck, I've seen the arthroscopic pictures of the medial side and everything looks undamaged, but then I really have no idea what to look for. All I know is that I've developed a stabbing pain near my knee pretty much anytime I move that leg. So for a day I'll lay off the painful home exercises, keep it iced and take painkillers until next year. Sometimes it's easy to find the humor in bad situations. At least, I always try to.

On the other hand, all things considered, I really don't have too much to worry about. As I left the PT office today there was an elderly man sitting in the waiting room. He had crutches next to him and a bandage on his leg, and he also only had one arm. It may sound cliche, but things could be a whole lot worse for me than they are. I suppose I tend to "complain" a lot more than most, and probably more than I should, or at least more publicly. I don't do it for attention, or pity, or anything self-serving, but rather for some form of catharsis. It makes me feel better about whatever tends to be bothering me to express it to whomever will listen or read what I have to say. There's not much point in me reiterating the day's events to my wife, since she already knows what is going on, and it doesn't offer me the same satisfaction to recount them to Buster. Besides, even he probably already knows what's going on as well.

The other main reason I do it is for those people out there whom I consider to be my friends to know that I'm going through this or that, so in case they are having problems at least they know that they are not alone. Most of the people I know in the world I keep in contact with via electronic means. This, to borrow a fantastic expression from a friend, creates and interesting dynamic in a relationship. I know that it is either very cool or very pathetic, depending on how you see it, for me to be so isolated from the real world in this way, but I hardly ever think of it since I have been "meeting" new people and "making friends" this way since my early teens. There are some people I know, people I have never met in real life and probably never will, that I have known for nearly 20 years. If the true measure of friendships is duration and not quantity, then in that respect as well I must consider myself truly blessed as we inch ever closer to a brand new year.

Baths are good!

Well, I had the stitches removed yesterday and got the photo sheets from the surgery. My Orthopedic Surgeon went over the procedure and answered some other questions I had. Of course, I forgot to ask one thing that I had been wondering about since the surgery which is why the small of my back and right butt-cheek is still numb, but I'll have to call and ask him that on Wednesday when he is back in the office.

Isn't that the way it always is? There's always one important thing that you forget to ask the doctor that you think of shortly after leaving his office. Has to be one of the corollaries to Murphy's Law or something...

From there I went right over to PT since I had missed a few days because of the tooth and all. Still dizzy as hell from the antibiotics and other medication, so it is actually good that I am still on crutches since I can't even sit upright without being dizzy and lightheaded. They put me through the same things I was doing before, but I was also put on the exercise bike for 5 minutes. After 5 minutes of pedalling at a very slow rate I had covered a whopping half mile and burned a staggering 1.5 calories. The glass of water I had afterwards probably took care of that. It took quite a few turns for me to get used to that range of motion, but once I managed to figure it out and they adjusted the bike properly it was, well, like riding a bike, I guess. Keep in mind that I haven't ridden a bike since I was a child and my folks sold my bike in a garage sale with the promise (that never came) of getting me a 10-speed.

Well, no wonder I'm overweight... No bike to ride, so I was stuck in the house playing video games and eventually getting into computers. Go figure! Later that day, after the numbness of the cold treatment from PT wore off, I noticed my knee was feeling weird. It hurt more than it had in a while, and not just the obvious slight sting of where the sutures were removed. This morning I feel like I'm back to where I was a week ago. My whole knee area is throbbing, and I can feel my knee slipping every time I put even the slightest weight on it. Also, while doing my at-home exercises, my knee keeps popping and clicking a lot, and I've got pain there again. I'll have to address that on Wednesday when I go back. I hope I didn't overdo something, or something more stupid like sleep on it wrong. I'd really rather not have to go back to keeping it in the immobilizer.

I think a couple of little bits of the sutures in my gums came loose today when I rinsed my mouth with the saltwater. I guess that's normal if they're supposed to come out on their own eventually. Who knows what I do with them in my sleep. Between the tossing and turning and not being able to get comfortable and my grinding my teeth and my tongue running across the area I'm surprised I have any at all. There are lots more of them in there than I originally thought. Some in my gum at the front above where the tooth was, the obvious (real long) ones hanging down from the empty space, as well as some at the back of my gum and roof of my mouth near the area. What did he use for the cutting, a small chain saw? I suppose now that a lot of the swelling has gone down, the skin is drawing in and making the stitches more obvious. The good thing is I haven't seen any more blood coming from up there, so that's good. I'm only slightly worried about getting a dry socket since I had them before when I had 5 broken wisdom teeth cut out. I purchased my own little bottle of Clove Oil, which is just what an oral surgeon uses for that problem. Trust me, if you've had dry sockets you know what I'm talking about, and I don't want to have to chase the dentist from suburb to suburb like I did when I had my Wisdom teeth removed years ago back in Nashville. Literally one ounce of prevention on hand.

Right now I'm about to do something that I have not done since before my knee operation on 12/4... Take a bath. Yes, that's right! Since the surgery I have been under strict orders to not allow my left knee/leg area to get wet. So it has been nothing but "sponge baths" (which actually don't involve a sponge at all, as it turns out, personal cleansing cloths, and whatever else we could come up with to keep me from being too gross and stinky without accidentally getting my knee wet. Heck, at one point I decided to wrap my knee in Saran Wrap and duct tape it up to see if I could stand up and take a shower. Once again, that is something that turned out to be a Bad Idea. I suppose it would be brilliant for someone who had 2 legs to stand on, but once I got inside the shower, I realized pretty quickly that balancing on one leg and having nothing else to hold on to was only going to wind up with an ambulance being called, so that experiment didn't last long. So, what I'm about to do is run me a nice warm bath and get clean. I'll wash off all the leftover sticky goop from the electrodes, wash away the cryptic ink markings that are still on my leg and knee, and wash away everything else that has accumulated on my body for the past few weeks and be truly clean. Then I think I'll run another tub and just soak until I look like a prune. May even eat dinner in there, who knows...

Comfortably Numb...

Well... You know the old saying, "What else could possibly go wrong?" Trust me, at this point, I'm not about to say that anymore. Allow me to fill in the gap that has been the last few days...

This past weekend and peaking on Monday, one of my broken teeth finally went and got all abscessed and infected. Hurt like hell, and the codeine I had been taking for my knee wasn't even touching the pain. I went ahead and went to PT on Monday afternoon and was glad that I had made progress enough to not need to keep my leg in the immobilizer anymore. During the exercising, I suppose it was the increased blood flow that really made it excruciatingly painful. That and I was sweating like the proverbial pig from the infection. I really, really, should have not been worrying about my knee at that point since it turns out you can die from an abscessed tooth, but I was thinking to myself perhaps it was going to be one of those times where I have a bad toothache for a day or so, and then it goes away when the nerve dies. All my teeth do that. They're just genetically bad. When I got home, I started on a huge bottle of Augmentin (horse-pill size antibiotics) figuring I'd try and start fighting the infection, since it was currently winning. Luckily for me they can be broken in half since I have a problem swallowing pills, especially big chalky ones. Yes, I know that it sounds bizarre considering I've been on regular medication of 6-8 pills a day for most of my adult life, but I just can't seem to get them down. Heck, sometimes I have to chew them up. Ever chew up an antibiotic? Mmmmm... Tasty!

Once home from nearly surreal PT, my wife tried to call the 1 dentist that is on our insurance plan, but turns out his office is all closed up for the week for the holidays. At that point it was after hours, so she decided to call around in the morning for a dentist who was open and would see me, as my pain was pushing the "unbearable" part of the pain-o-meter. I was in and out at times, and burning up. I realized at that point this was not one of my normal toothaches I'd be able to weather and then get taken care of late on down the road. By the way, that Ora-Jel stuff sold in drugstores is useless. Perhaps it only works on things like slightly painful cavities or something. All it was doing for me was giving me a numbed lip and tongue for about 5 minutes at a time, and nice minty breath.

I really needed to get some sleep, but didn't see that happening that night. I took a few more painkillers, and then a couple more, and then a couple more, but it wasn't touching the pain. So I tossed in a handful of Tylenol and a sleeping pill, hoping that if I knocked myself out I could get some relief and some rest. It finally worked. In hindsight, that was stupid, and I don't recommend that anybody do that. I could have died in the night since I already stop breathing 5 plus times each hour from the Sleep Apnea anyway, and couldn't wear the CPAP mask since it pressed right on the tooth area. Hell, even a healthy person who doesn't semi-die many times a night should never take large amounts of narcotics and barbiturates without close medical supervision, especially when they aren't thinking clearly in the first place. To be quite honest, I really don't know how many pills I took. Again, incredibly stupid, but it worked.

My wife woke me up at 9:00am on Tuesday (12/23) morning and we went to see a dentist who was open and would see me, even though he was actually closing up early that day. I was in a lot of pain, since I didn't take any pain medication in case they were going to sedate me, and I really, really hoped they were... I sat in the waiting room for about half an hour and signed some paperwork my wife filled out for me, since I was hurting so much I could barely see straight. Eventually I managed to limp back to the dentist's chair (NOT my favorite place, by any stretch of the imagination, by the way...) and he looked around for a but, poked and prodded around my teeth for a minute (can you say, "OUCH!"), then said that he would not be able to pull the tooth because of all the infection, swelling and the fact there really wasn't any tooth to pull. He swabbed some Xylocaine around the area (only slightly better than the Ora-Jel, in my opinion), and then said that he was going to call an Oral Surgeon and set up for that guy to extract the tooth, as it would require sedation. Either that, or he just really wanted to leave early after all. Who knows. We left there with an appointment for 2:00pm for an Oral Surgeon in Myrtle Beach, as well as a written prescription/referral to have the tooth extracted. Even though I was still hurting a great deal, I thought I was going to get some relief!

Even though I was unhappy that this guy couldn't do anything for me, I was somewhat relieved to know that in a matter of hours I'd be put under and have the offending tooth or teeth out (he had indicated that the teeth on either side of the bad one may have to come out as well). The dentist had asked me if I had eaten or drank anything that day since the oral surgeon was going to have to put me to sleep and was happy to be able to say no because of this light at the end of the tunnel. Pretty much as joyful as someone in that much pain can be, I suppose. So, back to the house and I had to call and cancel my PT for that day. Maybe I was making sense, maybe I wasn't. I thought I heard them tell me that the office will be off for the rest of the whole holiday, and to give them a call back after the first of the year. The head PT guy wished me luck getting my tooth taken care of (he remembered how I had been the day before...). So great... Stupid abscessed tooth has now thrown my PT rehab all out of whack. I have no idea why I was even thinking about my knee at that point. I suppose it was anything to keep my mind off the big, swollen, throbbing mass of agony in my face and head. As it turned out, I had been mumbling incoherently when I had spoken to the PT guy, and hadn't remembered anything he said properly. When I spoke to him about it yesterday, we had a good laugh over it...

Arrived at the Oral Surgeon's office at 2:00pm and still had neither taken anything for pain, nor had anything to eat or drink since the other Dentist had told me not to. Trust me... I was very much looking to be IV sedated for the second time this month. Perhaps Joey Ramone had an abscessed tooth once and... Probably not. Anyway, while I was waiting in the packed office, I kept drifting just short of in and out of actual consciousness. In hindsight, I was perhaps, at times, in probably the deepest meditative state of my life. Again, I feel I must advise readers that there are probably better ways to reach deep meditative states! I sad to wait a little over an hour in the office, sign some more forms my wife filled out for me and do a lot of sweating.

Finally I get back there to a chair and they come in and look around in my mouth (no happy faces on them...), then I've got to crutch over to X-Ray and get some done since the other dentist hadn't done any. The Oral Surgeon's minions were under the impression that he had given us X-Rays to bring. I suppose that other dentist really way trying to close early for the day. Can't say that I blame him. I wouldn't have wanted to work on me either. So when I get back to the dentist chair, the oral surgeon comes in and looks at it and says that it will absolutely have to come out, but he doesn't think the ones alongside will. At least there's a consensus. Then came the bad news... He only does oral surgery in the mornings so he can't help me today! If I hadn't already been crying, this is probably when it started.

I couldn't believe it! Two dentists in one day, and still no relief. Then, when I muttered those words to my wife, the oral surgeon overheard me, grabbed my arm and started yelling at me. He yelled "Hey!" "There's no need to be rude!" "You calm down if you want me to help you!" I was aghast... I looked over at my wife and her jaw had dropped open as well. I mean, what the hell was this guy doing yelling at me? Whatever happened to compassion. I couldn't believe it; Still can't even now. No wonder I hate going to the dentist... Apparently they are all greedy uncaring bastards, or else in order to get good treatment I should have the "right" insurance plan. Hell, after he walked out, his own nurse, or assistant or whatever came over and apologized. Apparently there was another patient on the other side of a partition wall and the good doctor didn't want anyone else to know how I was being handled.

I start thinking seriously at this point of just going home, drinking a bottle of Whisky and yanking it out with a set of channel lock pliers. That or just shooting myself to end the agony. Lucky for me I don't have any whisky, pliers or guns around. Obviously, I wasn't really thinking of doing those things, or trying some 3 Stooges trick with string and a doorknob, but it was getting late in the afternoon and as everyone knows, that is when dental pain starts to get worse. By now my whole head was a just a big swollen, sweaty, throbbing mass attached to my shoulders and, according to my far, far better half, I was mumbling, not making any sense and drifting in and out since my fever was so high. Some may argue that's not far from my normal state, but I say that for illustration of the severe pain...

My wife managed to talk him into taking the tooth out Wednesday morning, and also got me a prescription for some Percocet for the pain so I could maybe get some sleep. It's not like we had much of a choice, since she had already found out that most dental offices were going to be closed on Wednesday. It was going to cost $450.00 (sounded a little expensive, but I wasn't in a position to haggle...) and they had to have the money up front, of course. Since we have $13 and change in our bank account right now, my wife tracked down my mom, who agreed to put the amount on her credit card. What a merry Christmas present for me! All things considered though, I'm not sure how a Playstation 2 would have helped me, so I was thankful that we were able to get the money to get this done. After that I remember it like this... My wife drove me to the drugstore and got the prescription filled, then we stopped at a nearby Arby's and she forced me to eat a Beef and Cheddar so I could take a Percocet right then before the anesthetic wore off completely. That was actually the first time I had eaten "fast food" in a year or so. Too bad I really couldn't taste it, but thank goodness eating Arby's roast beef doesn't really require chewing. I had to take another Percocet (only half as big as the antibiotics, but I still had to break the chalky little buggers in half) on the way home since the first one didn't do it. With a gradual suddenness, for the first time in the last 2 days the pain was down to a dull ache as we neared our humble abode. Once inside I took one more of the pills along with an antibiotic, then fell asleep. My wife was going to have to call my Orthopedic Surgeon's office and reschedule my appointment there, since I was supposed to go there Wednesday morning and have my stitches out and all. That would just have to wait until after the holiday since the tooth could not.

I awoke Wednesday (12/24) morning and my beautiful wife took me back to the oral surgeon's office. Lucky for me, I didn't have time to really wake up enough to start hurting bad before they took me back there and numbed me all up with some of those famous dental numbing shots. Then they put in the IV and started with the Versed, so I really didn't care about the tooth at all for the first time since it had started hurting a few days ago. A little while later, they pushed in the good stuff and I was out. When I awoke, I felt as if only minutes had passed, but it had been almost an hour. It had been the same thing with my knee surgery. Strangely enough, the first thing I asked was also the same, "When are you going to start?" I wonder if that is what everyone says? My jaw was hurting like hell where they had cut the tooth out, but each time I mentioned it, I was told by the oral surgeon and also his assistant that it couldn't be hurting because I was completely numb from some long-lasting shot of Xylocaine. Once again, absolutely no compassion, and now they were basically telling me I was lying about it hurting. Yes the entire right side of my face from my eye to my neck was numb, but the place where the tooth had been was hurting me. It was a different kind of hurt, though. The kind from things cutting into your gums as opposed to the throbbing jackhammer of the bad tooth. Maybe it was some kind of "phantom tooth pain." They're the experts and all. Once I had come out of the anesthesia enough, they got me to the car in a wheelchair, in the rain, down the world's most slippery handicapped access ramp. I wasn't really very sturdy on the crutches, so it was good that I didn't even try. By the time I was home, I was "sobered up" completely from the anesthesia and was hungry as hell, ready for some soup, some Percocet, an antibiotic and the bed. Done, done and done.

I just woke up a few hours ago this Christmas day morning (12/25), and my wife is still asleep since she hasn't really had any the past couple of days either. What a wonderful Christmas holiday we're having! I just took another antibiotic and a couple of those Percocets. The pain woke me up, I guess. Either that or my about to swallow all this icky gauze. My fever is holding steady at just shy of 102, which it says in the little book they gave me is to be expected. No big deal, as it was not far from that beforehand anyway. I'll take a couple of Tylenol just to be safe, though. Looking around, I don't see any fat guy in a red suit in my house. Ah, the old excitement from childhood to try and stay up to try and catch Santa just isn't what it used to be. Wait just a second... I just realized that we don't have a chimney! Oh well. I need to hobble back to bed now anyway. I suppose that in the end, I got exactly what I needed for Christmas, even though it wasn't anything I would have thought of months or even weeks ago.

Here's wishing that EVERYONE out there is having a MUCH better holiday season than I am! :) May you be surrounded by loving friends and family, enjoying good health and good fortune! There's only a couple more days left in this year, so I figure what else could possibly... On second thought, I better not say that ;)

I made it to the computer!

Hello! :)

Just wanted to update everyone on what all has been going on with me, for those who care, anyway! LOL :D This is going a lot of places, so it's semi-generic ;)

First off, many thanks for the kind words and offers, prayers and well-wishes from everyone! Knowing that you were out there thinking about me helped me get through all this stuff. I deeply appreciate being in everyone's thoughts!

I'm at home, doing better each day overall, and my days go like this...

Get up and do rehab exercises they give me from PT first thing every morning. One of them is to push my knee over and hold it to help everything "grow back" right. This one is the weirdest, also somewhat painful and squishy feeling!

Then I get in 4 hours on the CPM if I get up early enough. It's about the size and weight of a big server, so my wife has to set it up on the couch or bed and then get my leg strapped in. I'll take a picture of it. It's a pain...

If not, I'll have to do the whole 8 hours when I get back from PT. 8 hours is pretty much nap time, or book reading time, so I like to break it up into 4 hours at a time, or it is pretty annoying. Just imagine for yourself...

Then my wife takes me to PT Mon-Fri. There they do all the post-op rehab stuff and come up with new things for me to build up strength and all. I've got a lot of swelling still (can barely get into my shoes, etc.) so they can't push me hard to putting a lot of weight on the leg for now. Still on crutches and am able to get around on them a LOT better than I thought I would after the first try in the hospital. LOL!

Then before I go to sleep, my wife has to put my leg in an immobilizer so I can't injure it when I sleep. I really haven't been sleeping well at ALL, even when I was in the hospital on the all-the-morphine-you-can-click diet, so you can imagine that at home between the immobilizer, having to sleep on my back, and the CPAP I already use, it is useless. I tend to wake up every hour. It's annoying, but I catch naps in the afternoon when I can and on weekends.

Funny, I really thought I'd have time to catch up on some reading, write some letters, talk on the phone, and use the computer more. Truth is, all this trying to get better is pretty difficult work! :( Ah well... Tell you what, if I didn't need the money so much, I'd take a vacation after all this, because we could sure use one! LOL!

On the 24th (seriously, that is what my Dr. scheduled!) I'm getting my stitches out and also another follow up at that time. My Dr. is great. He was there checking on me every day while I was in the hospital, and he works closely with the PT folks. He's really good. One nice thing about having the stitches out is that I'll be able to get my leg wet so I can take a real bath or maybe even a shower! Yes, it's the little things that you miss the most. Granted, it's not like I'm hanging at a Tibetan monastery with no hot water and smelling like a Yak, but turns out I am a lot cleaner than I even give myself credit for!

After that, he'll make a determination on this or that and I'll have a better idea of when I'll be back to fully functional status. :) Currently, my wife has the big-fun tasks of bathing me, helping me get dressed, bringing me food, drink and medication; generally being my home-health-care nurse sans pay. Heh, not that I need proof that she loves me after over 12 years of marriage, but she's really gone the extra mile to help me through this! :)

Also, for those who wonder what was done, here are some (possibly gory) details:
The surgery is done arthroscopically. Three very small incisions were made around my kneecap. One of the incisions is for the bar that lifted my patella (kneecap) up, the second is for the arthroscope, and the third is for the other surgical instruments. The first thing that gets done is the removal of all the frayed, dead cartilage that had developed from years of my patella being misaligned. A tiny little cylindrical shaver spins around and cuts off the bad cartilage (think Dremel tool...). After the bad cartilage was removed, the patella was cut away from the iliotibial band (think really gross...) and repositioned so that it is in re-alignment with the joint. Also they found I had a tear in my lateral meniscus, so it had to be cut out and repaired. ACL was a bit frayed as well... Go figure! I'm getting my copies of the prints on the 24th. They will be gross, so don't look at them if that stuff upsets you! :) Hopefully I can get them scanned and all. And no, I don't know why they didn't use a digital camera... LOL! :) [note: scanner broke so use your imagination]

Well, that's it for now. Kinda hard to be comfortable sitting in this chair and all for very long, for those who wonder why I haven't been on IRC and such more, or answering my emails directly. I'm working on it...

Thanks again for all the support! :)

Peace!