Sunday, October 09, 2005

Stitch-Free!

Yey! Day 10 - time to get my stitches removed. Got to the physiotherapy centre where there were 5 other people with the same injury (except the lucky Clare who was there for a check and will be perfect in 3 weeks - wish that could be me!) so this is clearly a fairly common injury!

Taking out stitches was fine and took less than 10 minutes - and finally seeing my wound I'm very impressed. Looks like I just fell over and grazed my knee - was expecting much much worse!

Then had some stretching exercises. My knee feels pretty tight but it's getting better - I got to 70 degrees. At 100, I can finally start using a stationary bike - which will be great - after sitting around for almost 2 weeks I can't wait to do some form of exercise. Also did some VMO testing for quad strength and I registered 21.3 when 10 is meant to be good :)

Saw one of my surgeons and he said my knee had no other internal injuries which is uncommon - so I won't be getting arthritis at 30 (phew!) He explained my surgery - for those who are interested, they used my patella to replace my ACL. There are four choices - patella, hamstring, synthetic string or cadaver. In America they apparently commonly use cadavers, as this is less invasive and means you recover faster - the catch is it has a lower chance of success and a 1 in a million chance of HIV being transmitted. In Australia they either use patellas or hamstrings and the jury is out on which is the best. I'm still in total awe at how much modern medicine can do.

And I can finally get my leg wet without risk! Proper showers without having to worry about garbage bags etc to protect my leg! That was probably the best news of the day - it's the little things :)

Everything was really positive - I start proper physio on Wednesday. And back to work tomorrow - so the holiday has come to an end.

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