Unexpected complications…
2008
While I usually have to fight unexpected stuff on various occasions on a variety of issues, this time it’s not been me but my doc who had to fight with unexpected complications 🙁 Ok, let’s start with this: I’M FINE! Everything’s ok – again.
As you’ve read in my last blog-post, I was supposed to have my knee operation on the 11th of November, thus this Tuesday. As it was scheduled for 8:30h in the morning and nobody of my folks here in Berlin would have been available, my mum agreed to stay a day longer (we had brought my stuff to Berlin by car from Osnabrück on Sunday) and take care for me during the first couple hours after my operation. When I woke up from the anesthesia, everything was fine. I had no pain and felt not uncomfortable at all 😀 Actually I was in such a good condition, that I was able to go for a little walk with my crutches. But as you can imagine, things turned out to be way different than expected.
Before telling you what actually happened, here are some medical details: When you’ve got a rupture of your cruciate ligament, there’s no way to fix it but to replace it. The old ligament is replaced by a sinew from the leg that’s not of great use and can thus be “converted†into a proper replacement for the ligament. As a consequence, you’ve got two wounds: One from the knee itself where the ligament is replaced and one from the place a little down the knee where the replacement was taken from. In order to capture the blood that runs out of the body on these two wounds, two bags are attached to the wounds.
Ok, what happened was that instead of filling just one bag of each wound with blood, I filled more than 3 attached to the wound where the sinew was taken from, thus I lost in less than an hour more than one and a half liter blood. This weakened me severely and I partly collapsed while being on the toilet 🙁 After the docs had talked a bit, they decided to open the wound again in order to find the “leakâ€. To the very dissatisfaction of my doc, the second operation didn’t gave them a further idea about what had happened, thus they decided to transfer me to a hospital instead of letting me go home as planned before…
And that’s where I’ve been until one hour ago. I didn’t loose more blood over the last days so now the problem seems to have been disappeared the very same way it occurred… As I said above, I’m fine and everything’s ok. I’ve little to no pain and can now walk around with crutches so I’m more than happy to be able to use toilet and bathroom… 😉 Besides the described little setback (that caused my mum greater emotional trouble than me, taking it as relaxed as always) the docs are very satisfied with the outcome of the operation and the way I can handle the knee and my leg so far 😀
Ok, that’s it for now,Take care, Philip