I remember every single detail of that day down to the last second of insignificant time. The before, during, and after will forever be imprinted in my mind, a reminder of my limits. I also know that what happened and what will happen are not anything compared to some hardships others experience, but I can’t help but want to wish it away.
“This will require a surgical procedure,” were the words said by my orthopedic surgeon that sent my heart on a sprint one month prior to my surgery. I had been told countless times why my knee caps insisted on dislocating every time I turned wrong, and I had also been told many times that I would probably need surgery to tighten and reconstruct the tissue to help prevent the dislocations. However, it didn’t prepare me for the news because I had hoped that the other ideas to fix it would work. I knew that I had already gone through a procedure before, but getting my tonsils out and having work done on my leg seemed different. If everything didn’t go just right, I would have to give up activities that I had done since I was a little kid, and my life would change in a way that I wasn’t ready for.
The butterflies from the weeks before turned into stinging bees when I woke the day of the surgery, and every once in a while I would receive a stab of panic before I calmed down and tried to concentrate on my book while we waited in the hospital. Of course, on the outside I was as calm as can be, while my inner turmoil increased as time started moving faster.
When the nurse called my name, I jumped a little, my fear finally getting the best of me. I followed her with shaking hands as my parents spoke to the other nurse behind me. The next hour and a half was as I expected, the undressing and putting on the gown, the heavy blankets that I wished I could disappear in, the IV, and the doctor coming to talk to me and draw some x’s on my leg. As he did this, he chuckled because it tickled me, and said, “These are just to make sure we don’t operate on the wrong leg.” Then another doctor came in, and for what seemed like the fiftieth time, he explained what was wrong and what they were going to do. They also said that if what they had in mind didn’t work, they would go a step further and have to be more invasive.
I listened to the spiel as they talked about the congenital defects and the ligament and tissue looseness, but it all seemed far away. However, I’m sure that my parents listened to every word as they sat on either side of me with their hands grasping mine. Before I knew it, the nurse was back and told me, “Only a few minutes left to wait now. I need you to go to the bathroom one more time, and when you get back, I’ll have a pill and water for you before you have to get settled in bed.” After all this, the anesthesiologist came in and, seeing me scared, joked around with me to help me relax. Then he said, “I don’t even need to poke you again. The needle goes in your IV,” and then asked me if I were ready. For fear of crying if I spoke, I only gave a shaky smile. I looked to my parents as she hooked up the needle and inserted the meds into my IV.
Within about thirty seconds, I started to feel a little weird and a few tears fell without permission. After no more than five minutes, they were telling me that it was time to go and that it was all right and I would do just fine. My parents left, but not before bending down to kiss my forehead and telling me, “Good luck.”
Then they wheeled me back. By then I was completely out of it, and everything was starting to make me giggle, which I never understood because I was also crying. It seemed to take forever to get to the operating room, and just as they opened the big doors, I blacked out.
The dreams brought memories of times of carelessness and fun, but after a while of smiles, sunshine, and laughing, they turned dark. My mind was working its way through the different scenarios of after-procedure horrors: the doctors telling me the problems were way worse than they thought, and my parents telling me I would never be able to play softball again. With these came the unrealistic nightmares of never being able to walk, having an infected leg, and being paralyzed. Of course, I knew that these were not going to happen, but in my unconscious state I had no logic to say that it wouldn’t.
Upon awakening, I felt horrible. The level of misery that I felt throughout it seems impossible now, but when it was at its highest, I couldn’t see an end. Words seemed to spill together as I tried to form a sentence in my head and act it out. My head felt like it weighed a thousand pounds as I finally said the four words of the question that I needed to know the answer to. “How did it go?” came out in a jumbled mess of sound that I still cannot believe the nurse understood. Her answer was loud and uncaring. I did fine.
For what seemed like five minutes but what were actually several hours, I would fall asleep, only to be woken by a nurse who told me to eat, drink, and then sit up. Well, as imagined, a girl who was just under heavy anesthetic doesn’t have the strongest stomach. Because of this, every time the nurses made me do this little routine, the drink and food would work its way up almost instantly, and I would be left with the burning throat and watering eyes. After each of these episodes, my nurses would tell me to lie down, rest, and relax. Almost like clockwork, after I would just fall asleep, they would wake me up to go through this series of events that they couldn’t seem to see was making me feel worse than if they had just left me alone.
My mom was the only one who seemed to realize what I wanted, and so when the hospital was about to close and they were getting me ready to be moved into a new room because they were worried about me dehydrating, she said no. The release papers were signed, and I was able to go to my hotel room and sleep for as long as I wanted until it was time to take pain medication at least.
In the morning, it was tough, but not even in the ballpark of the day before. A post op visit with my surgeon was that day, and though I was still dead tired, I could appreciate him saying that my incision looked fine and that he was sorry that I had to go through a bad recovery. I was fitted for my splint in the cast room and had my leg rewrapped tightly, so it was easier to crutch without dragging it behind me. The news that my quad strength was practically gone scared me. I wasn’t even able to lift it off the table. I knew that I had a long recovery, but I was determined to beat the expected time of six months.
The next few weeks were tough, and I was tired all the way down to my bones. However, I kept going. Then for week after week, and doctors’ appointments after doctors’ appointments, I kept up my strengthening. Until about six weeks in, the day before I was to walk for the first time, I fell at school. It hurt. The moment that I hit the ground, the pain in my knee was like someone had stuck a pry bar into it and was wiggling it back and forth. An emergency trip to the doctor was needed, and when I arrived there, it was a sharp slap to the face when they said, ”Your recovery has been set back about two weeks.” All the hard work and strengthening that I had done in the past few weeks seemed to mean nothing when once again I wasn’t able to lift my leg off the table. The only word I could think of when we were walking out of the hospital was why?
Of course, I couldn’t give up just because of a small setback, so I set back to work and started doing all my stretches and exercises twice as often, so I could still meet my personal deadline. I started going to real physical therapy at DRS, and it became harder. They pushed me in a way that I needed. The soreness started to get worse, so they would put medicine patches on my knee every once in a while along with ice, ice, and more ice. It helped quite a bit and kept me going. The therapists would laugh with me and joke with me, making the most boring or hard exercises seem fun. Instead of dreading the afterschool work, I would look forward to it. Because of this, the people from DRS will always hold a place in my heart because they did more than help me recover from surgery; they became my friends during a time that wasn’t easy for me.
My first attempt at waking for the first time since my surgery was a challenge. The therapist had to teach me the motions of walking again, and I felt like a baby just learning to walk. It was also very difficult. By one walk to the end of the hallway and back, my leg was shaking, and I was breathing hard. What was so important about this visit, however, was what the doctor reminded me before he left the room. I still had the other knee that was slowing becoming worse, and I still had more procedures on my left leg,
On the two-hour car ride home, I thought about what he said, and I realized that I would never be able to be a normal carefree teenager like most. I evaluated my future, and I knew that I needed to be strong then; thus, I went ahead and let a few tears escape and swore that they would be the last self-pity tears I would ever cry. I fully realized that day that ignorance is bliss, so on the whole way home, I couldn’t help but wish as hard as I could that it was possible to wish it all away.
“This will require a surgical procedure,” were the words said by my orthopedic surgeon that sent my heart on a sprint one month prior to my surgery. I had been told countless times why my knee caps insisted on dislocating every time I turned wrong, and I had also been told many times that I would probably need surgery to tighten and reconstruct the tissue to help prevent the dislocations. However, it didn’t prepare me for the news because I had hoped that the other ideas to fix it would work. I knew that I had already gone through a procedure before, but getting my tonsils out and having work done on my leg seemed different. If everything didn’t go just right, I would have to give up activities that I had done since I was a little kid, and my life would change in a way that I wasn’t ready for.
The butterflies from the weeks before turned into stinging bees when I woke the day of the surgery, and every once in a while I would receive a stab of panic before I calmed down and tried to concentrate on my book while we waited in the hospital. Of course, on the outside I was as calm as can be, while my inner turmoil increased as time started moving faster.
When the nurse called my name, I jumped a little, my fear finally getting the best of me. I followed her with shaking hands as my parents spoke to the other nurse behind me. The next hour and a half was as I expected, the undressing and putting on the gown, the heavy blankets that I wished I could disappear in, the IV, and the doctor coming to talk to me and draw some x’s on my leg. As he did this, he chuckled because it tickled me, and said, “These are just to make sure we don’t operate on the wrong leg.” Then another doctor came in, and for what seemed like the fiftieth time, he explained what was wrong and what they were going to do. They also said that if what they had in mind didn’t work, they would go a step further and have to be more invasive.
I listened to the spiel as they talked about the congenital defects and the ligament and tissue looseness, but it all seemed far away. However, I’m sure that my parents listened to every word as they sat on either side of me with their hands grasping mine. Before I knew it, the nurse was back and told me, “Only a few minutes left to wait now. I need you to go to the bathroom one more time, and when you get back, I’ll have a pill and water for you before you have to get settled in bed.” After all this, the anesthesiologist came in and, seeing me scared, joked around with me to help me relax. Then he said, “I don’t even need to poke you again. The needle goes in your IV,” and then asked me if I were ready. For fear of crying if I spoke, I only gave a shaky smile. I looked to my parents as she hooked up the needle and inserted the meds into my IV.
Within about thirty seconds, I started to feel a little weird and a few tears fell without permission. After no more than five minutes, they were telling me that it was time to go and that it was all right and I would do just fine. My parents left, but not before bending down to kiss my forehead and telling me, “Good luck.”
Then they wheeled me back. By then I was completely out of it, and everything was starting to make me giggle, which I never understood because I was also crying. It seemed to take forever to get to the operating room, and just as they opened the big doors, I blacked out.
The dreams brought memories of times of carelessness and fun, but after a while of smiles, sunshine, and laughing, they turned dark. My mind was working its way through the different scenarios of after-procedure horrors: the doctors telling me the problems were way worse than they thought, and my parents telling me I would never be able to play softball again. With these came the unrealistic nightmares of never being able to walk, having an infected leg, and being paralyzed. Of course, I knew that these were not going to happen, but in my unconscious state I had no logic to say that it wouldn’t.
Upon awakening, I felt horrible. The level of misery that I felt throughout it seems impossible now, but when it was at its highest, I couldn’t see an end. Words seemed to spill together as I tried to form a sentence in my head and act it out. My head felt like it weighed a thousand pounds as I finally said the four words of the question that I needed to know the answer to. “How did it go?” came out in a jumbled mess of sound that I still cannot believe the nurse understood. Her answer was loud and uncaring. I did fine.
For what seemed like five minutes but what were actually several hours, I would fall asleep, only to be woken by a nurse who told me to eat, drink, and then sit up. Well, as imagined, a girl who was just under heavy anesthetic doesn’t have the strongest stomach. Because of this, every time the nurses made me do this little routine, the drink and food would work its way up almost instantly, and I would be left with the burning throat and watering eyes. After each of these episodes, my nurses would tell me to lie down, rest, and relax. Almost like clockwork, after I would just fall asleep, they would wake me up to go through this series of events that they couldn’t seem to see was making me feel worse than if they had just left me alone.
My mom was the only one who seemed to realize what I wanted, and so when the hospital was about to close and they were getting me ready to be moved into a new room because they were worried about me dehydrating, she said no. The release papers were signed, and I was able to go to my hotel room and sleep for as long as I wanted until it was time to take pain medication at least.
In the morning, it was tough, but not even in the ballpark of the day before. A post op visit with my surgeon was that day, and though I was still dead tired, I could appreciate him saying that my incision looked fine and that he was sorry that I had to go through a bad recovery. I was fitted for my splint in the cast room and had my leg rewrapped tightly, so it was easier to crutch without dragging it behind me. The news that my quad strength was practically gone scared me. I wasn’t even able to lift it off the table. I knew that I had a long recovery, but I was determined to beat the expected time of six months.
The next few weeks were tough, and I was tired all the way down to my bones. However, I kept going. Then for week after week, and doctors’ appointments after doctors’ appointments, I kept up my strengthening. Until about six weeks in, the day before I was to walk for the first time, I fell at school. It hurt. The moment that I hit the ground, the pain in my knee was like someone had stuck a pry bar into it and was wiggling it back and forth. An emergency trip to the doctor was needed, and when I arrived there, it was a sharp slap to the face when they said, ”Your recovery has been set back about two weeks.” All the hard work and strengthening that I had done in the past few weeks seemed to mean nothing when once again I wasn’t able to lift my leg off the table. The only word I could think of when we were walking out of the hospital was why?
Of course, I couldn’t give up just because of a small setback, so I set back to work and started doing all my stretches and exercises twice as often, so I could still meet my personal deadline. I started going to real physical therapy at DRS, and it became harder. They pushed me in a way that I needed. The soreness started to get worse, so they would put medicine patches on my knee every once in a while along with ice, ice, and more ice. It helped quite a bit and kept me going. The therapists would laugh with me and joke with me, making the most boring or hard exercises seem fun. Instead of dreading the afterschool work, I would look forward to it. Because of this, the people from DRS will always hold a place in my heart because they did more than help me recover from surgery; they became my friends during a time that wasn’t easy for me.
My first attempt at waking for the first time since my surgery was a challenge. The therapist had to teach me the motions of walking again, and I felt like a baby just learning to walk. It was also very difficult. By one walk to the end of the hallway and back, my leg was shaking, and I was breathing hard. What was so important about this visit, however, was what the doctor reminded me before he left the room. I still had the other knee that was slowing becoming worse, and I still had more procedures on my left leg,
On the two-hour car ride home, I thought about what he said, and I realized that I would never be able to be a normal carefree teenager like most. I evaluated my future, and I knew that I needed to be strong then; thus, I went ahead and let a few tears escape and swore that they would be the last self-pity tears I would ever cry. I fully realized that day that ignorance is bliss, so on the whole way home, I couldn’t help but wish as hard as I could that it was possible to wish it all away.
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