Knee Problems...

Don's got knee problems. Arthritis. Necrosis. Less than 1/2 of a meniscus. It's a pain. Really... it's a pain. 

Things were going fairly normal (as normal as could be for him) until his 40th birthday party which his lovely wife decided to throw for him... at a bowling alley! The knee in question was already not feeling great that day, but it was too late to back out. It was a surprise party, and it was all I could do to "randomly" choose going there for a "date night." He was surprised! And we had lots of friends show up to celebrate with us! He had a "Good Lordy, Don's 40" cake. Things were swell... well, until about 2 frames into the 1st game, when he turns b/c I said his name. *POP* goes his knee. :( He says nothing throughout the whole 3 hours we are there... but it's pretty obvious it's not okay by the time we get home.

This starts months of pretty intense pain that just doesn't want to cease. 

What the VA wants to do is just put Band-Aid solutions on it b/c he's WAY too young for a knee replacement. While I understand this, it is really frustrating knowing he has to deal with this every day.

Fast forward a little and here we were at the VA on October 22nd having a scope done to clean out some of that junk in his knee (torn meniscus) hoping this will relieve the sharpness of the pain and where my blog story really takes off. Forgive me for the length of this post. You know I can't really get a good story unless I use as many creative words as possible. :) 

The day of the surgery, I meet Don and his mom and our younger two kids at the VA after I take our daughter to school.  I went back to the room where Don was "waiting"... I guess they call this the pre-op room. It might as well have been called the crap-we-took-too-long-on-someone-else-so-you'll-have-to-wait-twice-as-long-as-we-originally-told-you...anyone-got-Yahtzee!? room. We waited for over 2 hours in that little room.

A couple of male nurses walk in and out of the area, one of them had a very straight, no-emotion kind of look on their face. I looked at Don and said, "Wow. How would you like to have that guy for a nurse?" We chuckle and talk about other stuff. (I forgot to mention they had Don change into what looks like an anti-radiation suit-type gown that dons the saying "Do not use in MRI." I'm now thinking, "A magnet would have been really fun right about then.")

About 1/2 hour before Don gets carted off to the OR and after the doc comes in to double check everything, that same nurse comes in and starts strappin' Don's arm to prep it for an IV. I'll put it to you this way. I'm almost certain they put him through a class on how to insert an IV just moments before entering his room. It was awful! It looked like he was bludgeoning don's vein, attacking it, making it bleed then walking away. Don and I give horrified looks to one another. He comes back! Oh crap. You're done for! The guy forcefully gets it placed, with much grimacing from Don... then I notice the GUY ISN'T WEARING GLOVES!!! ew. Seriously. Isn't that a code violation?!

 

While waiting, we found a CD and CD player near the bed. Three actually. The first was Toccata and Fugue in D Minor. AKA: "Frankenstein." HAA!! We were rolling, especially listening to it on the low-fi speakers on this 1990s CD player. Feel. The. Bass. We thought it would be funny to play that as they were wheeling him out but refrained from doing so. We also found a Tim McGraw CD and a Phil Vassar CD circa 1993. We sang a little and the nurses passing by would glance in past the curtain.

We were bored by then, so we started flinging the tabs that were on the edges of the doors over to indicate which service we needed... like "nurse" or "anesthesia" or "Specialist"... At one point, we had over 1/2 of them. Only one person looked at it and had a weird look on their face as though they weren't even sure what the heck the things were for! (that or they thought something must be really wrong with the dude in room 2. 

Caden was really worried about how horrible Dad's IV looked.
Really. Caden was holding his own wrists. (Notice the metallic gown.)

Caden and Declan and Grandma stop in. Tick Tock. What is taking so long? "We are waiting for the doc." So, the boys are running around this little room when all of a sudden, Caden finds a retractable magnetized door that holds TP on the other side. WOW! Toilet paper. They both play with that for a while, opening and shutting it... then Caden's eyes are drawn to the large black button just underneath the toilet paper... he pushes it. *FLUUUUSHHHH* The hidden toilet flushes. His bewildered look says it all. "I was not expecting that," he says. hahaha By this time, Caden has Declan saying in his monster voice "TOILET PAPER!" every time the TP pops out of its cabinet.  

So, the moment arrives when they take Don to the OR. They say, "Say your goodbyes and see-yous!" I looked at Don and said, "Well! Have fun!" They start carting him out, and I repeated something Don and I were joking about earlier... "I hope you come back with two legs!!" hahah To which the entire medical staff that was with Don GROANED! lol  I think the doc actually said, "Ohh, we're not doing THAT kind of surgery!" but no one laughed. I was laughing. :) and I'm pretty sure Don was, too... of course, that could have been the Valium. *shrug* I'll take what I can get.

We went on a walk while Daddy was about to go to recovery. This part of the trail terrified Caden.

The surgery went well, and it was a little funny watching Don come back to consciousness. Caden was with me. The "recovery room" was a GIANT room with lots of curtains with people all behind them just waiting to wake up. They had told me that he was having a hard time waking up, so I should come up and try. Was that them telling me that my sweet loving voice was going to coax him out of his drug-induced snooze?   *Deadpan voice* "Don. Wake up." haaha

 

We rounded up the clan and got him fitted for crutches and got him to the car.

 

The doc told him to not ever think about running again and that this is his last scope. The outlook for his knee is poor. It will be a long time before he can consider knee replacement, but things are looking okay for now; and we have some funny memories of waiting for the surgery to begin. Now, if we can just figure out what those pictures of the scope actually are of!

Don's knee after the bandages came off the next day.