The road to recovery

What will it look like in 10 days?

Yesterday was pretty brutal.

I got home from Las Vegas just before 6am. I took a quick post-marathon shower and crawled into bed at 6:15, wrapped my arms around Travis and asked "what time do we need to get up?"

"7." His sleepy voice answered.

Ugh.

So when the alarm sounded, we rolled out of bed and got dressed. Horses and dogs were fed and we headed down to Apple Valley for Travis's knee surgery. I used the quick opportunity to complain about how sore I was before Travis would have a better reason to complain.

We arrive a little early and sat in the Taco for about 10 minutes chatting. Travis wasn't nervous about the surgery, just apprehensive about the long recovery. Clearly, he doesn't like to sit around.

We were called in almost immediately once he signed in and Mary Lou, a super nice nurse told him to get in the first bed.

"This one?" Travis asked.

"That would be the first bed." She replied.

Uh-oh. Mary Lou has a sarcastic side. It was on.

Among other things, Mary Lou took Travis's vitals, gave him an I.V., gave him his backless gown and asked him to remove all clothing, and shaved his knee. All of these procedures were open for jokes, but Mary Lou maintained her professionalism while keeping things light.

Dr. Chuong, an anesthesiologist who looked young enough to be in his first year of med school, came in and talked to Travis about a nerve block. This basically sounded like an epidural for your knee. Travis said he wanted it, and I was asked to go back to the waiting room while they numbed his leg. They brought me back in for a few more minutes before Dr. Chow was ready to take him into surgery at about 10am.

I napped in the truck while Travis was in surgery. I felt like a zombie. I had no idea how much time had passed when Jason called to check on Travis.

"What time is it?!" I asked, panicked. "11:30" Jason said. Oh good. They said it would be about 2 hours.

Running Vegas at night...or the clarity of Suzanne's brain on December 5.

Jason and I laughed about my harrowing night trying to get home from the RNR Las Vegas Marathon (more on this later). He woke me up enough to get myself back into the waiting room to see Travis post-op.

Dr. Chow came out and told me the surgery went well, that there was little cartilage damage and that the ACL replacement went well. His medial and lateral meniscus were damaged beyond repair, so Doc pretty much "trimmed up the flaps" and that was about all he could do.

Once Travis could form logical sentences, we were able to head home. Most of the night and into the morning, Travis seemed a bit concerned about how long his leg had been "dead". His foot literally looked disconnected from his body. He is looking at six to eight week timeframe to walk again. So we thought we could blog about it (and other things going on with us).

But just before posting our first blog entry at 3:15 today, Travis noticed he could wiggle his toes and foot. Yay! He called it a sock puppet.

Yeah! Painkillers!

That's a big step. (Pun intended?)