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!