Week two post surgery

I got my staples out yesterday, that felt weird.  They have a tool that looked suspiciously like a regular, old staple puller.  I wondered if it would bleed but thankfully it did not.  The nurse has sufficiently scared me though.  She said my knee looked really swollen still and was quite worried about the staple that sits over my knee cap.  So now I keep wondering if that's going to bust open any second now.  I've had ice on my knee close to none stop since I got home yesterday.

We are in the middle of the second, poorly time work trip for the husband.  So far it's been going alright.  I'm on my second night in a row of sleeping in my own bed instead of on the couch...that's progress.  The two biggest concerns right now is that the dog keeps getting out of the backyard and how am I going to get myself to work? 

Because of the bone contusion and cartilage damage the doctor recommended that the running miles come way down and I find a different activity to spend most of my time with.  I guess it's going to be triathlons for me.  I don't care for bike riding that much but I've done swimming before and it wouldn't be terrible to return to it.  Or maybe I'll just aim for 5 or 10Ks and not too many of them.  Not the news I wanted to hear or the way I wanted to end my running days for sure.  I guess we will see how it goes with time and rehab.

Sunday night, when I was attempting a bath while trying not to get my right leg wet (it was heavily saran wrapped....), I noticed that my calf is already very noticeably smaller than the other one.   I measured it today, a full 1.5 inches skinnier than the left one. Great, now I'm going to be a gimp with one chicken leg!

But I finally finished reading Cloud Atlas and I got an Indian shooting a star on my tootsie roll pop, so we'll call it a good day.

Day 2

Highlights:

Flowers delivered from the peeps at the boy's work.

Got the drain removed and the bandages changed.

The hole where the drain leaked quite a bit. 

That was gross.

I got these "hot" TED compression stockings I have to wear to prevent blood clots.  All I need now is a nurse's cap and I'll have next year's Halloween costume all set.

I took a picture of my knee before they bandaged it this morning.  But it's the kind of thing someone needs to be warned about I think.  6 stitches holes and several staples and all kinds of swelling.  Maybe later I'll have a fun before and after to compare.

The hidden dangers in brushing your children's teeth

I must have skipped over this part in the Parenting 101 presentation.

The part that says if you kneel on the linoleum in the bathroom floor in such a way that you would be able to see into your child's mouth and thus confirm that you are actually brushing their teeth properly, then the blood vessel(s) that run across your knee cap will EXPLODE.

Not even joking.


And that the very nearly asleep current husband will crack one eyelid, mumble something about his wife being a hypochondriac and pull the covers up a little higher over his shoulder. So I sat for a bit with scary veins throbbing and burning and watching my knee turn purple, knocked out some Dr. Oz dvr events and went to bed.
One a side note: This has happened once before. once. And that time involved same current husband, a fierce competition, and a bright yellow tennis ball hurtling toward my ankle at who knows how many million miles an hour.
And that was my own fault because I looked at said fast moving ball, thought "My husband would not really be trying to hit me with that" and stood my ground. I didn't move an inch. Which I probably should have because that ball collided with the knobby little bone on the outside of my ankle, exploded the blood vessel there and felt exactly the same as what just happened to my knee.


This is what it looked like in the morning.




So weird. I was sure when I told my mother about it the next morning she would be all kinds of concerned and have very motherly advice on why it happened and how not to let it happen again. NOPE. Verdict from the mom column: It happens, get over it.

So. I'm glad it's not shorts weather outside. And don't you think that knees are kind of ugly and strange looking anyway, aside from the giant purple bruises?