Wednesday Morning, September 14th I had got myself situated comfortably (as best as I could) in the bed doing my logic (Yes, I know I’m a geek as well as a jock) problems. Dr. Richmond’s fellow came in to check on me. He thought I looked good and said the procedure went very well. He said they could keep me another night if I wanted to stay. I laughed outright; I think he took that as no. I asked about leaving he said he didn’t think that should be an issue. I still needed to meet with Dr. Richmond and the PT and I should be able to go home.

My next visit was from Dr. Richmond. He went over the procedure with me again and again I heard that the procedure itself went very well. What he found after removing all of the bad cartilage away from the injured area was that the amount of cartilage needing to be replaced was much larger than he expected. The missing cartilage ended up being the area of a silver dollar. I asked what that meant for my knee. Basically it lessens the percentage of success. Not much I can do either way, there was plenty of Carticil to fill the area and I’ll have to continue through the same recovery protocol. How he explained it to me is instead of having a 95% success rate it will be more like 80%. I asked about going home today and he said I passed the look test. He said if the patient looks good more than likely they would be fine to go home. He said as long as I get the okay from the PT I should be all set.

One of the anesthesiologists stopped in next. She went over the basic pain management with me. For the first 48 hours she wanted me to take the Oxycodone without tying to wean off them. For the first 12 hours I would be taking two every 3 hours and then after that two every 4 hours. Once I’m past that first 48 hours I can start weaning off them. Before I could start taking the oral medicine I needed to get off the IV, I had no problem with that!

I paged my nurse and asked if it was all right to get breakfast. She said yes and all I needed to do was call room service (can you believe they call it room service in a hospital?). I ordered up toast, eggs and bacon. I also had some OJ to drink. Soon after I placed my order the nurse came in to visit me (I think her name was Jen). She said if I wanted to get the IV off I could. I quickly relied YES! I had just finished my second bag of antibiotic. She undid the IV but had to leave the lead in my hand. She said that I still needed to get one more dose of antibiotic before leaving. She also said that she would page the PT and let them know that I was ready. All his before breakfast!

I was going to call my wife but it was still a bit to early for her (she would still be busy getting the boys on the bus for school). I figured I’d call after breakfast. Breakfast was not very good. The toast was rubbery and the eggs were way too salty. The bacon was good but I ended up only eating one slice, for some reason I was feeling a bit queasy. I called home and said I should be coming home probably sometime early afternoon.

Quite a bit of time went by before the nurse poked her head back into my room. She asked if the PT had been by yet and I said no. She said she would page her again. She, the PT, showed up around noon, she said that she needed to talk to Dr. Richmond to get the exact protocol for cartilage replacement physical therapy. We really didn’t do anything special, she just wanted to make sure I could walk on crutches. We went down the hall, made sure I could make it up and down stairs, and then went back to the room. The hardest thing was getting out of bed. She did give me one good tip about using my other leg to lift my left leg up, which has helped immensity. I found out that the only exercising I would be doing until I saw Dr. Richmond again next Friday was the CPM machine 6 hours a day, ankle lifts, and quad contractions. Once we got back to the room she said I was good to go. I told her I needed to take a pit stop in the bathroom. I did my business but while in there I really started to feel sick again. On my way back to my bed I had to grab one of the plastic basins they had in my room and I ended up getting sick.

I called the nurse and she helped me clean up. There really wasn’t any mess, just needed to wash out the basin. I said that I got the okay from the PT and wanted to know when I could get out of there. She said I needed one more dose of antibiotic but she would check with the doctor first. She came back and said the doc wants me to have the last dose. She said that is probably better then, I can have lunch, make sure I am still feeling okay, get the last dose and I should be all set to go by around 4. 4! I wanted to get out of there now! Ugg.

I got a call from Jeff; he was surprised that I was still stuck in the hospital. Once again he offered to give me a ride home. He said it would not be a big deal; it was close to when he would be leaving work anyway and he could skip on in and get me and then drop me off because I’m on his way home. Again, what a nice offer but I declined. On the way home I really did want to see my wife, I know, sappy.

I called home to give the new ETD (estimated time of departure). I mentioned that Jeff offered to give me a ride home, I got the “why didn’t you take him up on the offer?”. I should have never mentioned it. I then called room service and ordered a grilled chicken sandwich, Texas French fries and a Sprite. This was better than breakfast, the chicken was good just way too much roll in comparison with the chicken. The fries were okay and I didn’t have any issues eating. Basically spent my afternoon doing my logic problems and watching ESPN.

It was starting to get close to 4 so I was getting anxious to have my last dose of antibiotic. The nurse finally came in and hooked me up to the antibiotic. It was going soooo slow and time was now flying. At almost 4 she came back into the room and opened up the IV so that it started to move much faster. From that point it probably only took a couple of minutes to finish. Yea.

It’s four o’clock and I am excited to get out of there a well as feeling a bit queasy again. All of a sudden I had to get up and get the basin because I feel like I’m going to get sick again. At that point I could hear my wife and her sister coming down the hall. Susan’s sister was singing something as she turned into my room. What she got was me with my pale face and hand up trying to motion her to stay out, just moments before I got to taste my breakfast and lunch again. They were much better the first time!