So now I know…surgery sucks.  In case I had ever doubted the suckiness of surgery, my suspicions have been fully confirmed.

On Tuesday, I was just a regular gal.  Got up, went down to the Camp Lowell Surgery Center, had some surgery, and came out a completely co-dependent, helpless lame-o.

Turns out I needed the surgery though, so at least I didn’t get sliced for no reason at all.  In 2006, at the Sea Otter Classic MTB time trial – my first professional mtb race on my first professional team on my first free bike…feeling like a rock star – I ate it in a big pile of poop mud like they have out there in Monterrey and tore my MCL (medial collateral ligament – which runs along the edge of your knee on the inside of your leg).  The crash ended my weekend and kept me on the sidelines through June.  I didn’t have surgery at the time, since the MCL heals on its own, but saw a surgeon in the fall who said my knee was instable, but that I didn’t need to have surgery in order to be a cyclist.  I said, “Sweet, seeya later.”

So my knee hurt for the last two years.  It makes me a big “you-know-what-starts-with-a-V” on my MTB in the mud, no doubt.  It didn’t hurt on the bike, just like the doc said, but I can’t hike, run, walk around the street, change my cleat position without being in utter misery.

Finally, now that I have good insurance and a “real job”, I looked into what it would take to get my knee fixed.  Turned out, it wouldn’t be so bad, so I went back to Dr. Knife – actually my surgeon is Dr. Nisbet, and so far, he has been great – and he said, yup, this knee is still instable and that surgery could fix it (well, 85% of the time, at least).

Unfortunately, Dr. Nisbet wasn’t entirely sure what he was going to find.  In addition to tearing my MCL, he suspected that I had also torn my patellar femoral ligament which holds the kneecap in place.  The MCL and patellar femoral ligament connect at the same place, and that’s where my pain came from, so he thought we could just go in there and “tighten things up.”  The worst case scenario would be that my patellar femoral ligament was irreparable and that he would have to take a tendon out of my lower knee – the gracilis tendon, which apparently is kinda like the appendix, in other words not doing much – and replace the patellar femoral ligament.  But first, he had to open me up and look around…

So when I woke up on Tuesday at the surgery center, high as a kite, the first thing I wanted to know was what they had done.  The nurse told me they had done the ligament replacement, and just then Kyle walked in, and I think I started to cry…so they gave me some morphine, and I don’t remember much else.

Well, it was the best-case of a worst-case scenario.  Turns out, my MCL was fine, so he left it alone.  Additionally, I had no cartilage damage in my joint, etc., so the surgery was really clean and not too complicated.  He went in there first arthroscopically – and I’ll post the awesome picks of my previously screwed up knee when I get around to uploading them to the computer – to look around.  He saw that my kneecap was not sitting in the proper kneecap grove, so he tried dislocating my knee, and POP, there it went.  I never had problems with my kneecap dislocating, but he thought it was due to the fact that my legs are so ripped, that the muscles wouldn’t let it happen.

At the moment, I have three fabulous poke-holes, two incisions, a full-length leg brace that goes from my crotch to my ankle, a Cryo-Cuff which pumps ice water to my knee, a white compression booty, a bloody nose, and an empty bottle of Percocet.  It’s only been five days, and I’m already going crazy.  I took last week off from school, but I am going back tomorrow.  It should be quite the adventure.  Fortunately, I am already weight-bearing with the crutches, but I can’t bend my knee.  I see Dr. Knife tomorrow, so I guess I’ll know more about what’s to come in the next few weeks.  Nonetheless, this thing hurts like hell, and to top it all off, my nose has been bleeding all day.

Fortunately, I have an amazing, patient, loving boyfriend who has been absolutely incredible!  I guess Kyle knows how it feels, since he was in a full leg cast for 6 months when he broke his tib/fib playing soccer in middle school.  Anyways, he has made this so much easier.  Plus, my parents came down from Flag for the last three days to help out.  They made our house so much cleaner than it has been in months – which was awesome, and they also helped out a ton with everything else.  I’m very lucky to have all of them, but I’m still grumpy that I can’t bend my knee or take showers or do just about anything else.  Surgery really makes all those “little-things” like walking really not seem so little after all.

Here are some boring pictures I took from my cell phone lying in bed…

My leg brace:

My knees:

My good friend, the Cyro-Cuff – although I’m constantly convinced that it’s leaking, and Kyle thinks I’m insane…it must be the narcotics.  I love the Cyro-Cuff so much that it gets to sleep in bed with us:

The happy patient…

The most important thing to do now is come up with a great Halloween costume that involves a full leg brace and crutches.  Any suggestions???