Jun 09 2014 10:28 AM
Re: Ouch, that hurts, ouch
| Maybe this is already public knowledge here that I either missed or forgot about, but what were you doing that wound up shredding your ACL so badly that surgical repair alone (the kind without harvesting spare parts) couldn't fix? |
I partially tore it before I went to Europe (the doc figures) and finished the job when I got back. Playin hoops both times. It was wholly ruptured, so there was nothing to repair. Nobody touched me, btw. I was driving right, the knew blew out, and I fell in a heap like a sniper got me.
Sounds like the self-harvesting is painful. What finally made you decide to go that route? Best wishes for recovery! |
Thanks, man. The self-harvesting route is pretty structurally invasive & painful as hell, but there seemed to be less variables, slightly less risk, and a million less questions whose answers I didn't feel great about, which wasn't the case with using the donor tissue (if anyone's interested and has a strong stomach, this is the exact procedure I had, minus the meniscus repair at around the 10-12 minute mark):
[youtube]T7_bw9uE-AQ[/youtube]
The quick layman's version is this - they put an incision down the front of your knee, then using a small saw, they cut through your patellar to get at the tendon beneath. They then slice a piece of that tendon away and shave the bone stuff off, drill holes on each end of what will be the 'new ACL' and attach some string. Picture the new ACL as a hammock, with each end getting screwed into a tree that is your knee. They drill some holes in the sides of your leg (one of em's for a camera), shave off what's left of the ruptured tissue, feed the new tissue through, and screw it into the bone on each end. The alternative would've been to just use a cadaver tissue and skip all the bone sawing (in this case, it would've been the achilles of a 32-year old guy who died of unknown-to-me causes. Superstar rock climber? Junkie? Somewhere in between?? Who knows...). They still would've had to drill holes in the knee and screw the new thing in, but I was just kinda concerned about the source of the tissue.
My surgeon was great and actually recommended the cadaver tissue, but said there are plusses & minuses to both and let me choose. He said the negatives for going with cadaver tissue were the very small chance my body could reject the tissue, which would result in re-doing the surgery to use my own tissue anyway. But there was also the minuscule chance of catching an infectious disease up to and including HIV and Hepatitis. This sounded kinda crazy to me and I asked how HIV-positive donor tissue is accepted in the first place and he said the tissue goes through a very thorough irradiation treatment for sterilization, which only brought up a shit-load more questions in my head about the quality tissue after that type of treatment. I just kept picturing a limp, discolored piece of bacon from Subway.
On the infectious disease stuff, he said, "One in a million chance."
"People win the lottery, doc," I said, and we went with my own, prone-to-tearing, strong-as-Kleenex muscle tissue.
LeiterWagnerFasterStrongr wrote:
Or, conversely, go NUTS with the painkillers, and write some REALLY good songs. Stay strong. |
I'm all out, boys. Time to call in a refill.
| d'Kong76 wrote: And mind the scotch intake on those, bourbon works better. Preferably from Kentucky. |
I'm happy to report the Four Roses pairs wonderfully with the oxycodone.
Thanks for the well-wishes and keeping me entertained, yall.