ACL Day 1

The surgery went well, according to Hardy. It’s been a month of meeting consultants, reading medical papers and trying to decipher what the best solution would be for my poor knee.

Hardy says that I have a complex medial meniscal tear which is the greater issue than the ruptured ACL. I won’t return to dance or high impact dance for 2 years, he says. It seems to be differing opinions; no squatting past 120 degrees for 2 years….who knows.

The operation went smoothly – I was wheeled into the theatre and a sedative was injected through the veins in my wrist. Before I knew it, I was waking up again. Apparently, I had babbled a lot at the doctors, I even tried setting Mr. Hardy’s son up with someone. I really hope I didn’t say anything else too embarrassing.

After surgery, I was wheeled into my room and I couldn’t move my lower body at all. They had injected a spinal nerve block into me, which was actually pretty horrible and annoying. I wanted so badly to move my legs, and couldn’t even pee. My bladder bloated and filled up and I tried my very best to pee into the bedpan. Sonia, my nurse, was Portuguese with a load of chutzpah. She really helped my recovery and I wish I had her throughout the night.

JM left at around 9pm. Poor thing must’ve been exhausted; we arrived at the hospital at 5.30am and slept very late the night before. I had a morphine injection at around 7pm. It definitely helped with the pain, but it made me feel queasy when I stood up. This resulted in the bedpan spilling twice – which resulted in me having to stand and wait for the sheets to be changed. I woke up a couple of times at night; went to sleep at 10pm, woke up at 12 to pee and take more meds and to put on the free cryocuff which Marcial gave me, woke up at 3 to pee and get Codein, and finally at 7 again to pee – when Mr. Hardy walked in whilst I embarrassingly needed to get cleaned up for it spilling everywhere.

I woke up at 9 with a wonderful breakfast which I had overordered to serve to the boys. JM came in half an hour too late and I had demolished the brekkie. George came in later and it was really wonderful spending time with him and chatting to him – it really put my mind off the entire situation.

2.45 we left the hospital, and spent 2 hours in traffic. Felt quite ill but closed my eyes to try and forget about the situation. I’m not comfortable taking so many meds and my tummy is not very happy with it.

I’m back at Janet’s and Amy’s made me a huge chocolate cake, and Janet’s bought me loads of goodies to cheer me up. I am really treated like royalty here.

I’m walking already – and not wearing a knee brace. Seems like my recovery is going to be quite different from before! I can do all my exercises except for leg raises, because I don’t have full extension yet.

1. Movement of ankle

2. Quad tension

3. Hammy engagement

4. Leg Raises

5. Heel slides