JAMES KNEE SURGERY

James' knee had been bothering him for the past couple of years but did nothing about it until this year. It has progressively gotten worse.

He went to the family doctor only to be told that it was fine, to take some ibuprofens & not use it for a while.

It wasn't until he "begged" to go see an orthopedic specialist because it wasn't getting better. This is where he found out that he had a torn meniscus, 2 cysts (some of the biggest the dr has seen), & a cleft in his knee due to hitting it on something. Who knows hows how & when this all happened.

So a few days before Christmas James was scheduled for a simple knee scope to take a couple cysts out & repair a torn meniscus. He was going to be able to walk out & be running within 3 weeks - no biggy!

The 20 minute surgery turned into a 90 minutes. James' knee turned out to be a little worse off than the Dr thought. His meniscus was out of place & more damaged than they saw on the MRI. The Dr said that he went out on a limb to fix it. He was tempted to just take it out, but then it would guarantee that James would have to have a total knee replacement within 10yrs y

So now he was scheduled to be on crutches for 3 to 4 weeks & no running for 3 months.

This ordinarily wouldn't be a big deal, except my parents jut left the day before for Seattle. And as for me, this was all a little overwhelming.....I feel like I can't even take care of myself right now. I have been SO SICK. Throwing up & terribly tired. Not to mention the sight & smell of food is plain awful.....so now I have to take care of James, Spencer & myself....& cook all 3 meals a day. Ugh! Give me a noose!

To top this off james ended up getting a blood clot. The pain in his calf wasn't letting up, so after several days, I said that it was time to get it checked out. That is when James, once again tried to convince me that it wasn't anything. I finally put my foot down & we went to get an ultra sound. Sure enough it was a blood clot, right at the knee. Had it been any higher, the dr would have put him in the hospital. First of all, we are grateful that we found the blood clot before it was too late & secondly, we are grateful there was no extra hospital stays.

James started on shots & pills right away. James has officially joined the DVT-er club.

Time to give a shout-out to Dr Robert Jackson. I have been so impressed with him. On the night we found out James had a blood clot...we stuck around the clinic & instead of the Dr Jackson giving us to the on-call dr.....he took care of us himself. No only that, he finished up his surgeries at Timp & came down to the clinic & talked to us for about a 1/2 hr. Since then James has called a few times with extra questions & concerns & Dr Jackson calls back himself. That is impressive - I have worked with many doctors over the years & I have never known one to do that. We have felt that he truly cares about his patients. A great doctor.

It has been 5 weeks now. This last week was a big one for James. He gave up his crutches & went back to work. His knee is doing better, but his calf is stuff hurting quite badly. If it wasn't for that he would have been able to be up & at 'em sooner than now. Those darn blood clots.

He took a couple of trips to the grocery store & to Costco. His worker buddies at the Cotsco made him use an electric cart. He now realizes who has the best electric cart in the valley....it's like the cadillac of electric carts!