So I'll offer some unsolicited advice for free.
If you need out patient elective surgery, July 5 on a Friday is great. Doctors like long weekends just as much as we do.
Only one doc had any patients scheduled at the facility today.
As a result, I had numerous attentive nurses. No one else was in the recovery ward with machines beeping and buzzing and machines disgusting noises.

And everything went extremely well.
It turns out I had not 1 but 2 meniscus tears so I guess I got one repaired for free.
By God I do love a bargain.

of course we'll see how I feel when the drugs wear off.
I'll probably revert back to crying like a baby with a wet diaper.

 

Jerry, good for you. Are you home yet?

I can vouch for it being a great day for surgery. Where I'm at we have only 14 today vs. 25 on a normal day.

 

YAY!!! Glad its all over but the crying. Hope it is a relatively painless recovery.

 

Did they give you a block before the anesthesia? If so, the pain not get too bad for another day or so. Dilaudid is my painkiller of choice for knee surgery. It's usually easier on the stomach than Hydrocodone or Oxycodone, too.

 

Heal quickly, Jerry. Thanks for checking in! I'll check on ya in a couple days. Keep that cell phone handy! Enjoy the buzzzzzzzzz.

 

yep was home before noon.


[quote name='dean;22649106]Did they give you a block before the anesthesia? If so, the pain not get too bad for another day or so. Dilaudid is my painkiller of choice for knee surgery. It's usually easier on the stomach than Hydrocodone or Oxycodone, too.[/QUOTE]

The doc said he would be injecting the area with a long acting form of Novocaine which will carry me into tomorrow.
I appears to be working well. They did give me a diluadid as well before I left.
One of the side effects of it is constipation ( sorry if TMI) which doesn't play particularly well with diverticulitis.
I'll be going very lightly with that though since I really don't want to spend another week on only an IV drip.

It could very well be the drugs but at the moment it actually feels better than when I went in.

 

Jerry, how long of a recovery period did the doctor predict? I'm possibly looking at the same procedure

 

based on my past experience with the other knee....
I had two operations on the meniscus.
The cartilage is sort of shaped like a toilet seat.
I had three tears. The first time in, we trimmed the ends and attempted a repair across the big part of "seat".
Due to the repair attempt it was a longer recovery 3-4 months.
The repair broke down after 6 months, when I jogged 100 yards back to the clubhouse for a pit stop.

On the second attempt, they cleaned up the repair and trimmed it.
After 2 weeks or so I was in pretty good shape pain wise.
I think I was golfing again after 4 weeks.

So for a direct cartilage minusectomy , figure 4-6 to be back to normal. a repair, much longer but worth it if it works.
In both trim jobs, at least for me, the post surgery pain was much less than the pre-surgical pain due to the tear.

Now an ACL repair, now that's a different story entirely. Figure 2-3 months to walk again on your own and at our tender age you never quite get it all back again.
At around a year, your about as good as it will get.

ignore Brady, Welker and RGIII, they'll have total knee replacements in their 50's.

 

So, Jerry...How you doing four days later?

 

Well, the knee is a little tight and a little tender.
I have to remember t take my ibuprofen so it doesn't swell.
I at that awkward stage where the knee is supporting my weight if not entirely comfortable doing it.
I'm not quite ready to toss the crutches yet.
I work at a very large facility and I'm a little reluctant to figure when I'm way on the other side of the building that I really should have brought my crutches.
Of course the flip side is I really probably shouldn't be trucking that far anyways.
It takes frickin' forever to get anywhere.

but at the end of the day I am in substantially less pain ( almost pain free) than I was a week ago at this time.