New Blog

Just a heads up that I've moved to a new blog, with a slightly new twist. You can find it at: http://onedugonedog.blogspot.com

Who's this guy?

And what is he doing writing a blog? He doesn't do that. Ever. Will the post every six months trend continue? Who knows. Time will tell.

This last semester was a rough one with surgery, PT, and what not so I'm looking at one more fairly easy semester to wrap things up in grad school; not the end of the world by any means, so I'm making the best of it.

I've been running and biking again lately. Nothing major, but running 2-3 miles a couple times a week, and biking upwards of 20 miles in a go, also a few times a week. I tried out yoga, although my schedule hasn't been letting me fit it in the past two weeks. Maybe I'll get back into it.

For now the game plan is to workout to enjoy it. No races. No immaculately laid out spreadsheets of my weekly mileage. No major short term goals other than enjoying the fact that I'm moving again. Although, I will admit, running another marathon at some point in the future would be amazing.

Also, I have a new friend. His name is Comet. He's my 8 week old border collie that I brought home this Tuesday. And he is the cutest damn puppy in the entire world, hands down. Next spring, when he's old enough, he'll be my running partner. For now, I just put all my effort into tiring him out. Take a look!

Playing outside

Being handsome

All tuckered out

Building a Super Knee

I've been a bad blogger the past few weeks, no joke. But I thought I'd throw in a quick update.

Physical therapy is going really well. Since I last posted, I've made a lot of progress; I've definitely crossed the line and am better now than I was before surgery. My physical therapist is constantly butting up against the limits of what he's "allowed" to have me do at 2-3 weeks out, so a lot of the exercises are getting pretty damn easy.

Friday I got to jump on the elliptical, and got my HR up over 150 without a peep from my knee. I've also been working on walking increasingly longer distances so I can start walking to campus again, and today I made it pretty comfortably.

This next week we're supposed to toy with some "light impact exercises", and see how it reacts.

Thats all for now. Catch you guys later.

"Poster Child"

That's what the physical therapist said.

Apparently a combination of the surgery going well and me doing what I was told lead to my knee looking damn good just five days after surgery. The PT couldn't remember seeing a knee with absolutely no swelling this quick before. He actually measured it vs. my other knee, and they were exactly the same.

That said, I like my new PT and the whole atmosphere at his place. At most PT's I've been to (and I've seen my fair share), it's always been the majority old folks who broke because they stopped using stuff or they fell. Every patient here was an athlete, and the therapists were high energy and motivational too. Bingo.

Today he started me out easy. We're working on basic range of motion and some simple exercises to wake things up a bit. From when I walked in, I went from bending my knee about 30 degrees to 85-90 when I left. We also did some exercises to make my quad more responsive, and I could flex it a whole lot more when I left than when I went in. I'm also supposed to drop the crutches unless I'm going a long distance.

Now I just have to go through this routine 2-3 times a day, and the progress should stay pretty steady. The plan is about 4 weeks of this fairly easy stuff while my knee heals, then we'll start working towards more fun stuff. Right now he said the goal is to be running in 3 months, but he thinks it could go quicker if this fast recovery keeps doing what it's doing.

Eww, knee pictures

I'll start with a "close up." Maybe you can see it, maybe you can't. The quality on my camera wasn't quite good enough to get the details that great. The bottom bone is my femur, the top one is my knee cap. If you look carefully, you can see a nice groove that my femur has been working in my knee cap. After surgery, that groove is still there, but the rubbing shouldn't happen anymore.


The rest of these pretty much go without explanation, so they just get captions.

The sleeve after getting the bandage off.

View of both incisions

Side shot?

Further away

Front shot. And my crotch (croppings for losers)

Days Four & Five

Everything is going well the past few days. I'm just taking it easy, keeping it elevated, etc. I can get around my apartment without the crutches, but I still try to use them the majority of the time.

Also, my hat's off to potheads, because I don't know how they can stand being stoned all the damn time. After three days, I had enough of it and just stopped taking the vicodin. I'm taking tylenol now; I've been through worse in the past. I'd rather have a little pain if it means I get to have a short term memory.

Yesterday the swelling in my knee was going down, so the bandage on my leg slipped way down. We rewrapped it, although I think there was some intricacy to how they had it wrapped initially because it definitely feels different. Damn thing is getting itchy too, but I should be getting it off tomorrow. I'll be surprised (and disappointed) if I don't.

Thats all for now. I'll probably have more after I see the doctor in, uh, 7 hours.

Day Three

Whoops, forgot to post an update yesterday so I'll just do a double today. Or perpetually be a day behind.

Yesterday I think I started to make a turn for the better. I'm still walking on crutches and all that, but getting around just seems a little easier. I was even able to take a shower yesterday, after wrapping my leg in a garbage bag and doing whatever possible to seal it shut. Ever since then, the gauss/ace wrap on my leg has been wanting to slip down; I guess it got a little saturated.

Nothing else big going on. Just doing what the doctor says to do and sleeping a lot.

Day Two

Well, today I'm definitely feeling yesterday's surgery, but that's to be expected since the local anesthetics have worn off. I've spent the majority of the day laying around watching TV and sleeping with ice on my knee, and my leg propped up on a pair of pillows.

Bending my knee hurts pretty bad today, even with the Vicodin, but I've been through worse pain in the past. I can't complain too much given the circumstances.

I also have some pictures of the inside of my knee that were taken with the scope during the surgery. It shows exactly what they expected to see. You can clearly see where my knee cap was rubbing on my femur. You can really see the inflammation. Once I get a good explanation of what each is a picture of, I might post a few just to share.

And to end on a good note, my mom made cake! :)

Post-op

Evening all, just giving a brief heads up about how surgery went.

First of all: damn, what a week for surgery. We got an ice storm from hell in Kentucky this week and it has shut down the town for two days for the most part. We got over an inch of ice, and needless to say it is freaking nasty outside. The hospital remained open, and so did the pharmacy I got my pain pills from (a friend of mine who got his wisdom teeth out yesterday wasn't so lucky).

As predicted, I couldn't sleep worth a damn last night. I think I tried to go to bed at 1, got up around 2:30, tried at 3, got up, tried at 4... eventually fell asleep and got about an hour of sleep, woohoo?

At the hospital, everything went very very well. Everyone was very nice, I even got in early since I showed up a little bit early. The pre-op physical showed I'm still healthy as a horse, although I'm not sure how that's possible with how much I've been eating like shit lately, haha.

Today was the first time I had ever had an IV for any reason, and I have to say I'm surprised at how fast medicine works when you get it that way, damn! First time they gave me something they said "We're giving you a drug to help you relax. It's like Valium but better." I said, "so I'll start feeling good pretty so --- ooohhhh." Then when I got to the OR shortly thereafter, I got to watch them setup briefly, then heard "You're going to sleep now" and woke up two hours later. I wish I could have fallen asleep like that last night.

Today I've just been bumming around all day. I'm drugged up on vicodin, but I sure can't feel a thing so long as I use my crutches. I got really light headed / nausiated when I got up a bit earlier, but the medicine they gave me for that worked like a charm too.

Thats all for now. Expect frequent updates, I'm hoping to use this as a recovery log for at least the next week or two. Thanks for all the support, too :)

Night before

It's the night before surgery, or as I like to call it "getting my knee stabbed."

Nervous? Yeah.
Ready to get it over with? Uh huh.
Not wanting to wake up at the ass crack of dawn? You bet.

Not much to say, really. I have family down here to help me get around, although I'm hoping I don't need help for too long. Really not sure what to expect during or afterwards so we'll just see how things go tomorrow.

Wish me luck guys. I'll be around.

Fail and get up and win

It's no joke the last several months have been shitty on my end. Can't run, can't bike, can't swim, can't do shit. Walking to class hurts my knee. Hell, driving hurts my knee.

I dug myself into a hole.

I fell back into my old ways of rotting in front of the computer. No working out. Not much going anywhere. Eating like shit. Absolutely no motivation.

Driving back to Kentucky yesterday I got to thinking about all the stuff I've accomplished. All the people supporting me. All the things that have changed in the past year, all the things I need to work to change back, and the few people encouraging me to do so (Thanks Joe).

I'm digging myself out of this rut.

Sure, I still can't run, bike, or swim. But even with my knee, I'm still capable of pushups/situps and the like, so I'm getting back to it. I started today with what was my first workout since, well, probably July. I did some pushups and a minor ab workout. Over the next few weeks I hope to build it up more so I'm in some sort of shape / state of mind to tackle the physical therapy.

My knee surgery is two weeks from Wednesday, and I'm going to hit it with some momentum.

“A winner is a loser who was willing to fail and get up,
fail and get up,
fail and get up,
fail and get up and win.”