Blessings

Today officially marks 4 weeks from surgery.  I have come so far (but still have a long ways to go).  One of my milestones for today is that I am DONE sleeping with the awful machine at night.  Don't get me wrong I cheated for the last 2 nights and haven't worn it the entire time, it had been causing me pain and discomfort while I tried to sleep!  The box to ship it back should be here tomorrow!  insert happy dance

This also means that in two weeks I can start adding weight.  I am looking forward to this A LOT!  We will start to see a tremendous amount of strength improvement once we start adding weight, in the mean time, we are still working on making my leg go straight and bending it all of the way, still not there.

Talking about my knee has really made me thing about a lot of things (you can only talk to the animals for so long).  Today it was raining when I woke up, crutches and wetness just do not mix so I opted to work from home.  When it was time to go to physical therapy I gave my mom a call to see if she would take me so I didn't have to do wetness alone.  This is when it all kind of hit me (don't get me wrong, I have been very aware at how blessed I am for quite some time).

I am pretty sure that I would NOT have been able to have surgery without some pretty important folks in my life.  My husband, my mom, my step-dad, our friends and family.  If you would have asked me 15 years ago if I would live 7 minutes from my mom I would have hesitated.  Ask me now and I wouldn't change it for the world.  Moving to Manhattan was one of the BEST things for Kevin and I!  Mom being retired is also one of the BEST things for me right now!  Having help with the laundry, cooking, cleaning and picking up has been an absolute blessing, in the beginning I was so upset that she was doing so much to help me, I felt like I should at least be helping.  Four weeks later, I know better!  She has been so amazing, coming over at the smallest text, taking me shopping, cooking me lunch and just providing me with some human interaction.  I am so blessed to have such a great relationship with my mom and to have such an amazing woman in my life, I know not everyone can say that!  She has definitely been an amazing role model for me growing up and continues that to this very day.

Working from home has actually posed some issues for me, I cannot get around to eat lunch because I can't really carry anything around to different rooms, pocket food like Halloween candy works best:)  Kevin has been a real trouper throughout the last 4 weeks, letting the dogs in and out, keeping the cat away from me, and he has even started to learn how to cook (we are talking beyond frozen pizza here folks)!  While the last 4 weeks have been trying on our marriage at times, it is truly making our relationship stronger.  More importantly we both have a better understanding and appreciation of what the other one does around our home.

Enough sappiness, one of my FAVORITE things to do when I go out in public now is to ride the electric wheelchairs around businesses.  Thus far my favorite electric wheelchair is the one at Dillons, hands down.  It feels clean.  Today I checked out the ones at Target, not fast enough for me, but it will do for now.

Birthday Month! (and another knee update)

Today marks three weeks to the day since surgery.  This means that I have three more weeks left of walking around with crutches being non-weight bearing.  This also means that I have 6 weeks left of crutches in general.   I am counting down the days!  I also have some good news from the physical therapist, when I first started seeing him my knee measured at 66 degrees, as of today we are at 96 degrees!  The goal is to get to 110-120 degrees.  So progress is being made!

This week is also our Annual Meeting/Conference that Extension Employees have each year.  Tonight, after all of the meetings were over, two good friends, B and D brought over a birthday cookie to help celebrate the big 3-0!  While my birthday was two weeks ago, I was pretty out of it and wasn't able to get around very well - How exciting was this!  We ate cookie pizza and B watched her first ever episode of Duck Dynasty!  While she assured us that this was probably the last as well, I suspect that she will secretly start watching Willie and his family on a more regular basis:)

Thank you for all of the prayers and thoughts, things are starting to progress in a positive direction!

Knee Update

I was afraid that this would happen.  I started my blog and wrote everything that I wanted to say in two blog posts. I keep thinking to myself "what should I write about tonight on my blog?" and nothing!

I even started two other posts but never published them because I didn't find them very entertaining or informative.  Here are some of the topics I considered writing about

1 - How much being dependent upon others SUCKS.  From having someone clean your home, do your laundry and dishes all the way to help getting in and out of buildings, your car, and bed.  This blog was just a big whine fest.

2 - Kevin and I often give our animals voices and then our animals have conversations with us.  I thought an entire blog dedicated to the smart remarks we 'think' our animals would say to us what be entertaining, but then I realized that you have to be there to find the humor in it!

So I have decided to write you another informative blog about knee surgery/osteotomy recovery.

Two works. IT SUCKS.

I have lost about 20 pounds thus far, pretty sure this is for a few reasons.

1. By the time I hobble to the kitchen I am too tired to eat so I turn around and go back to bed. 
2. In general I have not been finding food very appetizing, the other day I got Chinese take out for dinner.  I took one bite and decided I was full.  So wasteful, I know. 
3. I have lost some muscle mass in my left leg, but I have also gained some muscle in my arms, I am going to have some big muscles when this thing is all said and done with!

I wouldn't recommend this as a diet plan, but for the time being I'll take it!

Physical Therapy has also been incredibly frustrating.  I have a great Physical Therapist who I would strongly recommend anyone who has to go through PT use, his name is Nick and he is at Mercy West. He has been doing a great job, so encouraging and supportive.  The frustrating part is that my knee is just not progressing how I have been wanting it to. In fact, today I was not able to straighten it out for my PT exercises at home.  

Many of you know, patience is not my strong-suit.  I have been reaching into the bottom of the barrel for more patience.  We must be out.  

We have had so many folks ask us what we need, or what they can do to help out.  We just need prayers.  Prayers for healing, prayers for patience, prayers for progress. 

My Knee

As many of you know, I had knee surgery just two weeks ago today.  It was my 4th knee surgery before the age of 30 (I got the surgery in just a week before my 30th bday, because who doesn't want to spend their birthday drugged up and on crutches!).

My first post that I decided not to publish was essentially my medical history.  Didn't think you wanted to read that (and HIPPA may have something to say about that as well).

This is also for all of my friends out there who ask me what happened, or what I had done.  It is much easier to just point you here:)

In the last 6 months my knee had been locking and catching so I knew something was wrong, referral after referral led me to KUMed. I have to say, I was a bit intimidated being referred to a specialist at KUMed.  The Dr. that I had at KUMed I could not have been more impressed with.  My mom went with me to that first appointment and he sat down with us for almost 2 hours and went over everything.  Showed us the X-Rays, showed us why that was bad, shared with us the procedures that he was going to do, etc. etc.  This man NEVER looked at his watch, we were clearly his number 1 priority at that point.  You don't experience that very often!  He showed me that my left leg was crooked, it was between 12-14 degrees off, after 7 degrees that is considered a problem.  Because my leg was off I was putting extra weight on the outside of my joint, which is also where I had all of the meniscus and tissue removed.  Long story short - we had bone on bone action here and the beginnings of some intense arthritis.  We had to schedule surgery for about 3 months out at that point, because of all of the cortisone that had been injected into my knee in the last month he did not feel comfortable operating right away.  I also had a few things in my life that I wanted to get done and over with before we went through with this operation.  Each time I go back and visit with the Dr in my post op appointments, I keep discovering more and more things that were done in my surgery to help me out.  So here is a break down of what happened.
     1- The screws from my previous surgery were removed (which they do not allow you to keep at        KUMed.. BUMMER!)
    2 - What was left of my torn cartilage under my knee was removed, I also had a bone spur growing on the underside of my knee cap so that was smoothed out and taken care of
   3- A wedge was cut into my femur and a 13 degree angle was made, they 'harvested' bone marrow from my femur and used that to fill in the wedge that they had removed.  That was then covered with a plate and 10 screws (the X-ray shows only 8, but 10 sounds even more awesome)
   4- I then had what they call a micro fracture procedure done.  This is when they make a lot of little micro-fractures in your tibia which spurs the regrowth of cartilage.  While this isn't the same type of cartilage that you initially had there, it gives you some new cushion with that regrowth.  It takes the cartilage about 6 weeks to grow.

I am absolutely amazed at what modern medicine can do for us!  This last surgery is what Dr. Munn's called a salvable surgery.  It is the next step to having a total knee replacement done.  The reason they wouldn't do a total knee replacement is because of my age.  These issues are so uncommon that he doesn't really do a whole lot of these a year, but he specializes in this type of surgery and rehabilitation. He even told me that he is currently in the process of writing a paper about doing Osteotomy's (which is what step 3 is called), I am hoping that I am referenced in his work!

I had set a few goals after surgery of things that I wanted to accomplish, one of those was to run another 5K in a year.  I was sharing this with Dr Munns at my last appointment, he informed me that it was a terrible idea to do that.  He said that running itself will tear the cartilage that I am regrowing right now up and that he does NOT want me doing that.  SO... back to the drawing board I go for goal setting, I am sure I will come up with something fun and exciting!

The biggest question I am asked is "what did you do to it" to get to this point.  Honestly, nothing, I was born crooked I suppose and over time it progressively got worse.  I do know that this is the 15-20 year fix instead of the steady ever 5 year ones.  The next one will be to have a knee replacement.  We will cross that bridge when we get there, a lot can happen in 15-20 years in the medical world!

I will say that I have been overwhelmed with everyone's generosity!  K was not much of a cook before hand, but now he is making dinner every night!  From the bottom of my heart I cannot thank everyone enough! The prayers, phone calls, text messages and facebook messages have meant more to me than so many of you can imagine!  I couldn't have gotten through the last two weeks without my mom and K's help, they have been awesome.  I was pretty sure it was a terrible idea to send me home from the hospital on the last day, but my mom and K made it work, got me home, comfortable and settled in.  If either of them ever needed a reference to be a home health nurse, I'm that person:)

Here is the x-ray of my left leg.  The plate and screws are on the outside of my femur.  If you see the green arrow that is drawn on the picture that is the wedge that they cut into my leg and filled with bone marrow!

Introduction

I have been contemplating starting a blog for several weeks now, this afternoon I finally decided to jump in and do it!  SO, welcome to my blog, I'm glad that you have taken a few minutes to delve into my life and share some of those "oh so funny moments" with me!

Quick History - My husband, who I will call 'K' for all intents and purposes is the love of my life, he makes me laugh until I cry and is truly my best friend.  We have been married for just over a year!

Happy Anniversary to us!

As you can tell we are also DIE HARD K-State fans, as a gift last year K got me season basketball tickets and I LOVED them, so much that we got them again this year!

While we don't have children (yet....) we do have some fur children of our own.  A quick introduction:

Maggie: Ultimately called "Sarah's Dog" it is not a secret that Maggie and K have a deep seeded friendship (and love) for each other.  This is typically displayed during late night work sessions and Sunday afternoon football.  They truly do LOVE each other.  Currently Maggie is sporting her Bob Marley look as we have not taken her to get a hair cut in quite some time, I will be sure to post before and after pictures!  Since I have been layed up the last two weeks, this dog has not left my side and has been there for me the entire time!

 Abbie:  Kevin thought he needed a dog "to go running with" so he got a greyhound/whippet. While Abbie is technically "Kevin's Dog" she really enjoys hanging out with me. She is a great nap taker and always up for a little entertainment when we go outside and she has to show off for our guests.  I have never met an animal who is as incredibly OCD as she is, this is one of THE cleanest dogs I have ever met - - - to the point she will clean Maggie as well.

Our final family member is Fiona - there is a bit of a backstory that goes with this child.  For MONTHS I had BEGGED K to let me get a cat.  When I found out that we had a slight issue with mice in our basement I was CONVINCED I needed a cat to take care of this problem.  I whined and whined and WHINED for one and even tried to trap the neighborhood stray!  Our lovely neighbor knew how bad I wanted a cat so one day she showed up at our house with this kitten from her parents farm.  The kitten had been abandoned by the mother (for good reason as you will find out), it's little eyes were matted shut and it was pretty pathetic.  Looking back K and I are pretty sure that it was on it's final few days.  Not really wanting this kitten I politely asked K if we could keep it (knowing that he would say 'no, I'm allergic').  To my absolute surprise he said sure - - - for the next few days I spend feeding this kitten soft kitty food, washing it's little face and nursing it back to health.  In the beginning 'the cat' was on probation, we were just 'trying it out' -  -  -  and honestly, it was pretty chill, it would sit on our computer keyboards and just hang out.  So K named her Fiona

AND THEN the holy terror grew up.  I could go on and on about all of the naughty things this cat does.  One day I took off my wedding ring and set it on the end table next to me, only to see the cat grab it in her mouth and take off.  She seems to like to carry my jewelry around the house.  She instigates fights among the dogs during the middle of the night, she crawls on the very top of my headboard, she jumps in the shower and bathtub with you, she is awful.  But we named her, and K loves her, so I guess we are stuck.  I tried to get her to run away one day by putting her outside, she came back.  SO, I guess we are stuck with her.