knee celebrates 4 month birthday!

While waiting for the bus to get to work, had a sighting that made me a lil envious...Still a ways til I can do this:

the rollerblading part, not the outfit part.  

May 24: 3rd post op appointment with Dr. Edwards.  I was able to work that day, so it was convenient to have my appointment when I'd be at NMH anyways.  The wait was a lil on the longer side, which made me kinda antsy.  I played with my stuff to stay preoccupied, here's one of my creations with my wallet wrist strap:

A lot of questions were answered once I got called in.  Dr. Edwards said my movement is great and was impressed with the notes Kim PT had written about my sessions.  I was still thinking a lot about this "cadaver" ligament.  She explained a lot more that I wish I had heard earlier in my recovery phase because things made more sense.  Basically, in the OR when she saw that my grafts would be too small to make a new ligament, she asked for the tray of donated ligaments.  Out of the choices, she took the one from the youngest donor, who was 26 years old.  Without the help of that cadaver, my ligament would only be 6mm in diameter.  Sooo, what she did was intertwine the cadaver ligament with my tendons to create one 8mm in diameter.   She even sketched it out for me.  She even drew the little nuk where the ligament looped up and around into, which made more sense as to why my incisions are the sizes they are and locations of them.  When the ligament is put in intitally, it is at its strongest.  But at about 3 months, my body realizes there is something quasi foreign in it, so it starts to act weird.  Hence, some iffy-ness with stability.  Balance and strengthening are what will keep my body from not hating it.  Also at this time, the combined graft with cadaver will learn to like each other and form a bond called KIRS' NEW AND IMPROVED LIGAMENT!  here is the copy of the sketch (she tossed the original):

I ain't no MC Escher

It's that upper outer "screw" that i feel the most scar tissue around.  Everytime I bend my leg/dangle it, I like to put my finger over that incision and feel the scar tissue crunch around in there.  I apply pressure to it while doing that motion hoping it'll break the scar tissue up in there.  Then I sing red hot chili peppers "scar tissue" in my head.  The incisions right on top of my patellas don't have so much scar tissue build up in there.  And the long incision is just puffy and quasi numb.  The last things we discussed were my restrictions.  I brought up running, she said not until July.  Thought about the business casual rollerblader and asked her about rollerblading.  she said NOOOO!  that's in the same category as tennis, hence, not til november :o(.  i was surprised just because Kim had started me on the reebok slide.  oh well, gotta stay patient.  Dr. Edwards said that the next appointment would be 6 months post op, but she realized i may be in California by then, so to make an appointment with her before I go.

With my amazing surgeon/knee doc, Dr. Edwards

While examining my horrendous scar, i tried to look at the positive of it.  it looks like a music note!  i know, it really doesn't, but let's keep praying that that scar will go down and the color will match my skin better.  i have a total of 6 scars on my left knee now.  can you find 5/6 of them in this pic?

separated at birth.