Feeling slightly normal after surgery
I am currently 16 days post-op. I had ACL reconstruction surgery, with some additional bits and bops. Basically my knee is like a cool transformer, just a lot fatter (I swear its the swelling, okay?).
But wow, I really underestimated how difficult recovering from surgery is. I wrote all my professors that I was unsure what was going to happen, and might need extensions on my assignments. Even asked my physiotherapist if it would be too optimistic to go to work the day after surgery. "Perhaps two weeks out from surgery I can go to work again", I thought.
I truly thought my surgery was merely going to be an excuse for getting extensions on assignments, not going to class, or procrastinating.
Sha-na-nope... Turns out the excuse was real. (Surprise surpise, surgery is apparently a very serious thing).
The first 2-3 days I was hopped op on oxycodon, paracetamol and naproxen. I didn't really know how strong oxycodon was until I looked it up. Did you know its apparently twice as strong as morphine? I watch the show House with my boyfriend and that is the drug that Gregory House is addicted to. So, yeah, I got the good stuff. My knee hurt, sleep was not great but I felt okay about it all. Turns out that medication does really do something to your body, because when I ran out of oxycodon and naproxen I had the worst days, maybe not of my life, but definitely of my year. I tried sleeping through most of the days because the pain was simply so intense, now looking back at it I can't even imagine going through that again. I called the hospital crying about the amount of pain that I was in, begging for more medication. They gave me some extra naproxen but that was the extent of it. Luckily for me it did relieve some of the pain.
The second week was not a lot better. I had some good days, and some bad days in it as well, with one extremely bad one where I think I sobbed louder and more than I have in my entire life. Because it is not just the pain from surgery. It is the sleepless nights, fatigue, muscle aches, frustration, joint pain, back pain, hip pain, and the hopeless outlook you have on what life looks like in that moment. The physical and mental battle are both things you have to go through, and I was not prepared for it at all.
Today is the first day I feel slightly normal. I am not in my apartment but at my parents' house, sitting on a lounge chair right now, with only the slightest bit of nerve pain. I slept with only one true moment of pain, and that pain wasn't even as bad as it was yesterday evening. I was walking kind of normally with crutches. I pet my dog. I feel frustrated still, sitting here and not being able to walk with my mom, or do a handstand. I am very bored most of the time, and tired still. But if there is one thing I am realising its that having someone drill into your bones is not just a lame excuse to get out of assignments, it is genuinely life altering. It is not just calling in sick to school because you have the sniffles and don't want to go. It is a truly real and justified experience to not do work, because my god if I would have needed to do work during my first two weeks I genuinely would have sued the fucking university. (Not joking. The board knows that I would do it, I have beef with them constantly.) I mainly am writing this so that I have something to do; to deal with the boredom.
I hope everyone enjoys their evening, and if anyone has some experiences with surgery in general, or ACL surgery, reach out! I would love to get some hope for the upcoming days.
send me an email!