And so it begins

The surgery went well. My hired help (for here on out referred to as the nanny) arrived around 8:30am to pick me up and take me to St Joseph's hospital here in Tampa. FWIW, St Joseph's is great. First off, it was really relieving that every time I told someone where I was getting surgery, they all said "oh, that's good, that's a great hospital." And sure enough, the people there were great. I don't know how many of you have had the experience of surgery (I've had 3... man, I'm injury prone or something lol) but it's the same every time... at least at the good doctors. You get your anesthesia, you pass out, and everything is a blur but it's all done. The nanny took me home, I don't really remember but I passed out on my bed and few hours later, I felt good enough to Skype my parents. I knew that my parents would be worried so I figured the least I can do is call them and let them know I'm ok.

That was Wednesday. Thursday morning, I still felt fine. The nanny came back to check on me, get me some food, etc etc and I dismissed her thinking I'll be fine. Well, it was probably around noon on Thursday that I started feeling really uncomfortable. The pain in my knee, coupled with the soreness of my body for just laying in one position just made me feel miserable, even with my pain medication. And even though I tend to "tough it out" I did take the pain meds as prescribed but Thursday night, I could barely sleep... I kept waking up every couple of hours and not being able to fall asleep. By Friday mid day though, the pain started subsiding at which point fatigue really overcame me. I dosed off a few times until it was time for my post op rehab. After two days of having my knee wrapped up, it was obviously swollen.




The first exercises I had to do are simple things that you would never think twice to do. One is flexing your ankle towards you. It stretches the calf and the muscles behind your knee which at this point is like stretched super tight (and painful). The next few exercises are like flexing your quads (which are completely dormant at this point). Basically, the first step is to regain your range of motion as well as waking up your muscles which at this point is completely shut down. Mike, the rehab guy, gave me the exercises to do over the weekend.

Friday night, I probably had the first good night of my sleep. Today was the first day that the nanny did not come over and I was able to manage... even though, simple tasks like going from my bed to the kitchen for a glass of water takes 10 minutes (no joke) and it feels like hell of a work out, even with the crutches. Even then, it feels good to know that I am taking my first step towards recovery.

Even though I think this might be a fairly tight time frame, it always helps to have goals so I decided that this year's Vegas half (December something) will be my goal. Well, obviously, to run it faster than last year. I don't know how realistic that is. It's probably pretty close - like it's not totally unreasonable but it's not easy to achieve... ie perfect for a goal to recovery.

But man, to think that I was gonna work from home on Friday... ha ha ha ha, I was in so much pain and then completely drowsy, I would not have been in any shape to think straight.