She Stinketh No More (Post-Op Day 4)

Hooray, hooray! 

Today was "you get to take a shower" day!

• Goodness, a simple little shower is such a wonderful thing after laying in the bed for 4 days! So glad the smell of funkiness radiating from my body has ceased. I even sat in a chair and fixed my hair! It's the little things, folks...

• Completed my 2nd physical therapy session this afternoon. The PT has said that she is "very impressed" with my progress so far. I'm bearing the majority of my weight with the aid of crutches and even made full revolutions on the stationary bike for several minutes. My range of motion is returning quite rapidly! Even though I was kicking butt and taking names at physical therapy, my knee reminded me very soon afterwards that it had only been four days since surgery and forced me to get back in the bed, ice, elevate, and pop some happy pills (read: rockstar status was short-lived).

• Had an unplanned visit to the OS office yesterday due to some weird circulation issues going on with the foot on my operated leg (turning red, tingling, feeling hot). Good news is that the ultrasound they ordered came back all clear which ruled out the possibility of a blood clot. In the midst of that itsy-bitsy setback, the doc was incredibly pleased to see the minimal amount of swelling present around my knee. One of the particular procedures he performed (a lateral release) apparently has a reputation of causing incredible amounts of swelling for weeks, even months, at a time for some patients. It's definitely encouraging to hear from both the OS and PT that my knee is grasping for an "overachiever award" at this point.

• All of these "wins" have confirmed further my reasoning for documenting my post-op journey. Before my knee surgery, I spent a lot of time doing internet searches of people's experiences with arthroscopy and lateral release. What I found was that the majority of people who took the time to record their experience publicly were the ones who had the worst (and sometimes bizarre) outcomes. My hope through this is that I can contribute to the many stories in internet world and document both a positive experience and outcome from a procedure that has been given a bad rap.

We shall see! So far, so good...