The last day of 2012

So today is the last day of 2012, and what a year it has been!

At the end of last year, yesterday a year ago I started dating a girl, she then turned into my best friend, I then asked her to marry me on July 10th of this year, we got to have our first Thanksgiving and Christmas with each others families this year.  We are getting married on July 6th of 2013 and I am really excited for that and can't wait!!  We had a rough year together, between me getting a job and having to move 2.5 hours away and I lost my grandmother and she lost her grandfather, we could only go through that and much more with each other and I am thankful for her for it all.

I got to end my year with getting surgery on my right knee, found out I got synovial chondromatosis and not PVNS.  I go back to see the doctor this Friday January 4th.  I'll be making an update after that so that is when my next blog post will be, around that time.

So my knee seems like it is healing well, I can bend it a little more each day, I am off the pain meds and just taking tylenol every 4-6 hours depending on when I remember to take it or not.  I am able to walk on it fairly well with one crutch in my opposite arm, I am trying to start walking normally with bending my knee and whatnot when I am walking.  I also tried to walk without crutches a few times, I am walk sorta okay straight legged, but when I try to walk normal with bending my knee, it doesn't go so well.

Well, I hope everyone had a great 2012, and is going to have a great 2013!! My goal (New Years Resolution) for this year is, like many people, to lose weight, or at least lose a lot of body fat, since I am getting married in July, I would like to look good for the photos that I will have forever.

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas!!

Today has been a week since I had surgery on my right knee and I am glad that I have been home the past few days, way better than the hospital.

So my home nurse and home physical therapy have started.  I am doing just some motion exercises and straightening my knee exercises to work it out.  I am also laying on my stomach which is suppose to help straighten out my leg as well.  The nurse came today, looked at it and said everything is looking good. My pain level right now is like 1 and the highest is like a 2-3.

I am starting to sorta walk with the crutches.  Instead of taking a step and bringing my other leg up beside my already stepped leg, I am trying just walking normal but using my crutches with stepping with my right leg, which I had surgery on.  I am still cautious about walking without my crutches so I will give it a few more days of walking like this then I will try it.  I tend of have some pain when I first stand up, but once I stand there for a few moments the pain goes away and I am good to go.  I am getting better at steps, going up them, going down them I am still sitting down and sliding down them.  The steps outside my house have a double railing that I can hold both at the same time so going down steps with that is pretty easy, but inside the house I would rather prefer sliding.

Below I have some pictures of what it looks like right now, I took the picture either yesterday or the day before.  Some of the tape on the front of my leg is starting to peel and a lot of it looks to be healed.  The nurses said to just let them go and take showers and all that and let them peel off themselves, if I would pull them, they could rip open the scab.

 

Hope everyone has a wonderful Christmas, and remember that Jesus was born on that day!!

Home from the hospital!!

So on Monday 12/17 I had my surgery.  Got to the hospital at about 6:00 am, Then found out that I didn't need to be there until 7:00 am because they aren't giving me any pain blockers.  My surgery was set for around 10:00 am because the doctor had an easy surgery to do before me. I went in, signed in then they took me to my holding room until they take me back for surgery.  I got naked and put on one of those hospital dresses and got into the bed.  They did a bunch of tests on me, got me hooked up with a IV, then my family came back.  As I was laying there I saw the doctor walked up to my door and gave me the signal to let's get this thing rolling. So I went back to start surgery at like 9:30 am.  Got back to the room, and I remember that it was really cold in there.  I got in there and probably said about 100 times, remember to take out the urinary catheter please before I wake up, and I remember the doctor saying the same thing when he walked into the room.  They then hooked me up with a gas mask and told me to just breath, and then I was knocked out and they next thing I know I am in another room with a bunch of other people who just got out of surgery.  The surgery took approximately 3.5 hours, and I was in the recovery room for about 2 hours, then they took my to my room where I was staying where my family was waiting for me. I didn't eat that much most of the week while I was in the hospital, the food they gave me was kinda nasty.  So I stayed there until Wednesday.  They had a tube in my leg taking out the excess fluids.  I had a pain thing going into my body via the IV until Tuesday morning when they took that off.  I was in so much pain and I kept on asking for some pain medicine and it took them over an hour to bring it to me.  I got the pain medicine, Oxycodone, I was talking two 5mg of it every 4 hours, was also taking some regular strength tylenol in between that at the 2 hour marks because of the pain.  Then on Wednesday I got discharged at about 3:30 pm and then got back to my parents house at about 5:30 pm.

So the doctor has concluded that I do not have PVNS, I have Synovial Chondromatosis.  He said the surgery went really really well, everything came out fine and he believes he got it all.  I am allowed to walk on it, with crutches, putting as much weight on it as I can.  I got a home nurse and the home physical therapist that will be coming to check up on me.  I also got to have blood thinners injected into me via a needle, my sister will be doing that on days when the nurse isn't coming.  I go back and visit the doctor on January 4th, 2013 at 9:15 am and see what he all says.  I am hoping to be able to bend and move my knee soon, and then walk without crutches soon after that.  Below I have posted pictures of my surgery marks, they can cause your stomach to get all queasy if you look at it and it bothers you.

The scar on the front of my leg is stitched on the inside of my knee, has some kind of glue on it to hold it together, and has some sort of tape over it that will come off when I am showering, it will apparently start unrolling itself and come off then I just throw them away.

On the back of my knee he cut it in a S shape and there is just regular stitches that will need to be removed.

I also added a picture that he drew on my hospital bed before surgery, just thought that it was neat and I took a picture of it.  Also in the picture is just him writing on me knee, which is still there right now until I can wash it,

I am allowed to like sponge bath it and use a wash cloth but I can't take a shower until Saturday the 22nd.  I can wash all around my scars starting then and should be all good and happy and less stinky then.

I will leave the links for PVNS on here encase someone comes across my blog looking for information on PVNS.

Tomorrows my big day

Well, in a few hours, I will be waking up to go to the hospital to have my surgery. The plan is to wake up at 430 and I have to be at the hospital by 600am.

Last week when they called me, we set up times and what not, and they said I can't take anymore pain relievers, so I haven't taken any since Friday morning and my knee is hurting pretty badly all weekend.

So I am kinda nervous but I know I will be okay, hopefully I can sleep throughout the night until my alarm at 430. I will be praying about it all night and all morning until I go in. They said surgery like around 830-900 and it will take about 3 hours to complete. So after I am out, hopefully the next thing I know is waking up in my room with my fiancé and my family around me. Then it's the long 3-4 days of staying there, I am hoping that it is as short as it can get, no infections or anything. I know God is in control, and whatever happens glory to him. In my mind I say don't worry, but I am really nervous and probably won't sleep tonight.

Sorry that I like to jump around a lot when I am writing. My next post will be at point this week after I am good enough to type. I am taking my laptop to the hospital with me so I can hopefully amuse myself with that, reading my Bible, a book by Andrew Schwab called The Tin Soldiers, and my iPhone.

One week from today

In one week from today I will be sitting in the hospital getting operate on, I know as it draws loser my nerves are going to rack up. But I have my faith and trust in God that he will give me strength to guide me through it and to keep me calm.

Today I went and did all my pre-surgery testing. Felt like I did more tests today than I did throughout college. First I went to my family doctor and got a physical and they did an EKG. Then I went and got blood work done. Got some subway cause I was hungry from fasting for the blood work, then got a chest X-ray. Surprised all that only took like 2 hours, normally my doctors office is slower than molasses. So that's about it for today.

And I am a big fan of squirrels, this little guy was sitting in my parents back yard, my dad feeds them corn over the winter. This guy is a fat one!!

Another day, another big poofy knee.

This week so far has been rough on my knee, it seems like it is hurting more and more, and I have been on crutches for most of the week because of the pain.  I am kinda excited and scared for the surgery.  This will be my first surgery, outside of wisdom teeth twice, that I will be having.  Not sure what to think of it, but it needs done and hopefully the doctor gets it all out.

So last night I decided to take some pictures of knee, because in a week and a half it won't look the same, it will have a few scars on it.  As you can see in the photos, it is fairly swelled up, or well that what it looks like anyways.  I will have to take a picture in the morning so that you can see how much worse that it gets throughout the day.

So there we go, and today marks exactly 7 months until I am getting married to my best friend. :-)

My First Blog Post!!

This is my first blog post ever, wow, I am behind on the times... haha

Well this year has been a crazy year so far and more yet to come, I started dating my now fiance Kayla at the end of 2011, we got engaged on July 10th of this year, and we are getting married on July 6th, 2013!!

I am going to try to keep these short because I am not a talker and especially not a typer.

In June of this year, I was mountain biking and I wrecked, I fell to my left and I hyper extended my right knee somehow.  So I let it rest a while figuring that if I let it rest that it will heal.  So then in July, Kayla's grandfather had passed away, during that day was a lot of standing around, I noticed a lot of pain in my right knee and it swelled up.  I thought this had to do with something with my hyper extended knee so I just ignored it.  I played softball throughout the fall.

After that, I went and saw my family doctor because it was still swelled up so he just stuck me on some meds and it did not do anything for me but cost me a dollar and some change for the meds.  Kayla is a volleyball coach for high school, her athletic trainer for her team is a physical therapist so I went up and saw her so that she could check out my knee.  She testd it to make sure nothing was torn and there was not, so she sent me to one of the sports doctors in her group.  He did xrays on me and sent me for a MRI.  The xrays showed up as what it looked like calcium deposits around my knee and the femur.  He had me get two MRI's, one normal and the other with contrast.  The one with contrast is with an IV and they inject something into you so it shows the muscles and ligaments better.  First off, I am not good with needles, I almost passed out when it went in me, after a few minutes I was fine and the MRI felt like it took a few hours.  I then went back to the doctor and he said that he thinks it's PVNS, and it is not localized in one spot, it was in a few spots.  He did not want to mess with it so he sent me to a doctor in Pittsburgh, PA, Dr. Kurt Weiss. He is an orthopedic surgeon.

This past Friday, (November 30th) me and my fiance drove out to Pittsburgh to see him.  He came in, asked the typical questions about how you did it and whatnot, he then looked at my xrays and MRI's.  He was actually kinda thrilled when he was looking at them, just because either disease I may have is rare.  He told me that I may have either PVNS or synovial chondromatosis, or it could be a mixture of both. He said he won't know until he gets into my leg to see. So I asked 50 questions and then we scheduled my surgery for December 17th, so two weeks from today.  He called me today to verify my appointment and I asked him a few questions, I asked how long the surgery would take, he said approximatly 3 hours, the reason for this is because they are opening up my leg in both the front and the back.  There is masses everywhere, on my knee itself, the side of it, my femur, and on my PCL in the back of my leg.  I then asked if they are going to be sticking a urinary catheter in me, which they freak me out, and he said of course but asked if I wanted it out before I woke up and I didn't hesitate a second and said yes please, I just got to remember to remind him in two weeks because he might forget.  Then I asked if I needed a MRI before the surgery because I couldn't remember what he said, he said no.

So that is my year in short, I will continue to update this is more on my surgery, the recovery, and whatever else I think to spam this blog with!!