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Knee surgery success
It was snowing in Barcelona as my wife and I took a taxi to Sant Pau Hospital last Wednesday at 6:45 am. I got nervous when they started pushing me in a wheelchair towards the OR. One small victory was fastidiously shaving my legs especially around my bad knee the night before so they wouldn't have to do any prep before surgery and when the young nurse holding an electric shaver saw me standing in my gown she said you´re good.
When they moved me to the bed that I would be operated in shit got real. Almost immediately the nurse asks me about Trump and I´m thinking how horrible my last thoughts are going to be about him. What´s more my buddy who was with me when I crashed called the night before around 11 when I was in bed and started ranting about Trump too. He´s Welsh and the nurse was Catalan but I couldn´t believe The Apprentice WH was on my mind.
Increasingly nervous, I guess I pictured hot Spanish nurses tossing flowers in the air while soothing me, so with nobody by my side I felt my eyes flood with emotion. I completely lost it at the altar at my wedding so I told myself to get it together and do not start crying no matter what. Then somebody gave me a shot and I noticed I was relaxed how I feel sipping a glass of wine on an airplane so I asked what the drug was and they said fentanyl. I thought about saying in a Borat voice I like but no joke it wasn´t euphoric or anything but I think the perfect drug for that setting for I was chill af from that point and surgery was a layup.
The anaesthesiologist explained general anaesthesia vs an epidural asking which I preferred but I asked him to please choose. He said ok and walked me through everything. One classy thing I guess this is SOP but my doctor greeted me before going into the OR which really made me feel at home. I simply wanted to thank him once again.
Now I´m in the OR rolled to one side in the fetal position as the anaesthesiologist applies the epidural. Afterwards he gave me a sedative and I asked if I was going to fall asleep and he implied that I would be awake for a little while. Surgery was scheduled for 8 am so this was probably 8:30; I don´t remember anything from shortly after asking if I was going to sleep till opening my eyes at 11:50 and asking the anaesthesiologist how it went. He said fine and it was smooth sailing from that point. I knew exactly where I was as I was held in a staging area for about 4 hours of observation. I went up to my room about 4 pm and found out more details from my wife.
The procedure is called curettage where they remove the tumor and pack the hole in my femur with bone from a cadaver. I understand from my wife secondhand that they used pressure to fill the hole with cadaver bone and were satisfied after doing so and bending my knee in the operating room that they decided not to put screws in my leg for support. One of the factors is that the tumor can recur and if problems develop further down the road it´s tough to say whether it´s the tumor or related to the screws. This sounded positive.
I´ve never had any pain. Every time they asked me at the hospital to rate my pain from 1 to 10 I said 0. I have a cast on my leg for precaution which is coming off in 2 weeks. The nurses who put on my cast said that I should answer 1 just to be safe. But I arrived home yesterday around lunch and am taking no medication. They gave me a list of pain pills to take in case of pain but I´m not taking anything. I´m only doing the belly injection for blood flow when you have a cast.
My mind is boggled how smoothly everything went, but it helped that I had been there before for I stayed in the same trauma wing as before and knew many of the nurses. I waited 10 months for this surgery and only wanted to open my eyes afterwards. So my head is in the game and I sent word through one of the physical therapists to tell mine that I´m coming! I overheard one of the nurses at the hospital say, as I was moving from a plastic chair that I washed myself while seated in the bathroom the first day to a chair in the room where I was going to sit for a few hours, ¨God they´re so good when they´re young.¨
While here I wanted to ask if anyone has any suggestions for something to get my doctor as a gesture of thanks. He´s met with me for about a year and I feel a very strong bond with him even though I don´t even know if he knows my name. He is a special person in my life and I don´t want something of monetary value but more as a kind gesture. I think it should be something from the States although that doesn´t matter either. Just thought I would ask if anyone´s been there before. I´m sure lots of people give doctors ridiculous nicknacks but without knowing him it´s tough to buy something appropriate. Like even a dinner gift certificate sounds reasonable but I want him to value whatever I give and not have it associated with money.
Gosh that´s it. I get lightheaded easily so have to take it easy. I´m home alone which is a little scary until I get my energy back. I think because you lose so much blood and fluids the days following surgery that because they don't replace them that your body takes awhile to recover. I think my body´s focus is directed towards my knee which reminds me they cut a small incision to open the knee and the hole to go into the femur was small so the whole procedure was minimally invasive which is why I´m doing so well I think.
The doctors didn´t see any scar tissue so didn´t mess with anything there. Physical therapy since my leg is basically the same I went into surgery with 90 degrees ROM I don´t know how I´m going to get to 140 but I pray I will one day. We´ll see. What a ride. Thanks for reading just wanted to share as I´d posted here a few times and received support from salonistas and wanted to update. Before the break my doctor said a year for full recovery from this point. I don´t really care my goal is to just keep moving forward.
Hollis
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Originally Posted by Peter Polack
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