Torn ACL and Meniscus.....Bye, Bye Summer!!

Alright, alright, I'm finally blogging!! Happy?!? Hopefully these posts aren't too boring for you. We haven't really been doing much of anything. All we do is work and play softball. In fact, we play so much softball that something bad was bound to happen. And happen it did. Probably about 4 weeks ago Dallas was subbing on a team with his cousin. It was the last inning of the game and Dallas was playing shortstop. It was a pretty close game, so they needed to get the next three out pretty quickly. On one of the plays, Dallas had the ball and was trying to tag one of the other players that was running from 2nd to 3rd. The guy saw this coming, so he stopped and turned the other direction. Dallas planted, and turned to tag the guy, but that motion ended up dislocating his knee. He basically went down to the ground and didn't get back up. His dad was in the stands watching the game with us, and he ran down to the field to see what had happened. Sure enough, they suspected that Dallas had torn his ACL. He basically had to be carried off the field because he couldn't put any pressure on his knee. We immediately took him to the clinic to get some therapies on it to try and control the inflammation and swelling. This is what his knee looked like once we got to the clinic.

The next day, (Friday) we had an appointment to go see the Orthopedic. He confirmed what we suspected was a torn ACL...although, he couldn't tell us if it was a complete tear without an MRI. He also suspected a torn meniscus since Dallas was very apprehensive about full extension of his knee. We were really hoping that Dallas would be able to have surgery quickly.....but the doctor told us that before they can operate, ALL of the swelling has to be gone, otherwise the complications afterwards can be pretty bad. Sooooo, we went home and iced. And iced. And iced some more. He also constantly had kinesio tape on it to help drain the fluid. This is basically what his knee looked like for the next 3 weeks.

The same day we met with the Doctor, we were lucky enough to go and get his MRI. They were really awesome and got him in as soon as they had an opening. The best part of the whole deal was they said that since he was a local Physician, they wouldn't make us pay our portion of the bill, and just accept what our insurance paid! Wahoo! It was kind of funny because just a few days before this whole thing happened, Dallas was paying our bills and he was cursing having to pay so much for our insurance premium since we never really used it. Ha!!! He jinxed us! Anyway, once we got the results of the MRI we went back for yet another appointment with Dr. Edwards, our Orthopedic. He confirmed that the ACL definitely was torn, with an additional tear of his medial meniscus. That just meant Surgery, which we were already counting on. The bad thing was, we had to schedule it for 3 weeks out since that was the first available date, plus we had to wait the swelling to go down.

By the time it was time for surgery, Dallas was feeling really good. He hadn't been able to play any softball, and couldn't be on it for too long, but he could walk and put pressure on it, and was mostly walking without any kind of limp at all. I thought that sucked, because they were just going to go in there and make things bad all over again! Anywho, Surgery was this past thursday, June 11th.

Here are some pictures of the big day.

Here he is all prepped and ready to go. It was so funny because his gown was almost too small. It tied in the back, but there wasn't much extra fabric to close the gap :) Also, it wasn't very long either.....and the nurses kept coming and lifting up the blankets to look at his knee.........It was a little awkward if you get the picture.

These are Dallas' T.E.D. hose. They are sexy right?!?!? He has to wear these for at least 2 weeks to prevent blood clots. I think they are hilarious. I had to take a picture.

I call this wristband my claim ticket. They put this on me when we first got there so that I could go back with him to get him ready, and so I could take him home. They had to check it to make sure I really did belong to him. I think our matching bracelets are cute.

So once they took him back, I had to go out in the front area and wait. And wait, and wait, and wait some more. The surgery took longer than expected, and I really started to worry a little. Only, I never did tell him that. They said it was only supposed to last about an hour and a little bit, and it ended up being closer to two hours. Finally, Dr. Edwards came out to talk to me and tell me how everything went. He said that it took longer than expected because Dallas ended up having not only a tear in his medial meniscus, but a tear in his lateral meniscus as well. That was a relief for me to hear. I was so glad he didn't say something went wrong. I know it was a simple procedure and all, but still.......it's nerve racking. Dr. Edwards did say that everything during the surgery went better than expected. He said that his new ACL looked awesome. The tension on it was perfect and everything was better than he anticipated. That made me really happy! This is a picture of Dallas' new ACL. Sorry it's kind of blurry.....it's a picture of a picture.

Here he is in the recovery room. He was so loopy, it was funny. But he had to stay a little longer because he was having a lot of pain in his knee...imagine that, huh?!?

Anyway, another thing that was kind of weird was I guess one of the OR nurses accidentally got a needle stick during the surgery. So they had to come take Dallas' blood to make sure he didn't have HIV...awkward....

This is our new best friend. It's a GameReady unit. It is a vasopneumatic ice machine basically. It has a sleeve (like a great big blood pressure cuff) that you wrap around your injured area (in our case, it's his knee, but they make them for shoulders, ankles, backs...etc). Then you fill the red thing with ice and water, turn it on, and it works wonders. It pumps the ice water through it, as well as filling with air pressure. It's designed to pump the fluid out of the area. It starts filling at the bottom, and then pushes it up. This was awesome for him to use pre-surgery to help get rid of the swelling. Needless to say, this has been strapped to his leg ever since he got our of surgery.

He had a rough time coming home. The anesthesia wasn't really agreeing with his body, and the 30 minute car ride home didn't help. He got a little sick, but by the time we got him inside and lying down, he was a lot better. Here's a picture of his incision...I have a close up picture, but it's a little gross so I decided not to post it.

And this is what he has been doing since Thursday. He still has to wear the TED hose along with that great big black brace. He is also supposed to do ankle pumps every hour to keep the muscles in his legs from tightening up. Plus he is supposed to do passive extension exercises to keep things mobile in there. He is on bed rest for 5 days with his leg elevated above his heart at all times. It's only day 3 and the last two days have been awful. He can't sleep at night because his knee hurts, and his back hurts from lying down all the time. Which means that we get about 3 hours sleep at a time before he either needs more ice in his machine, or needs a new position, or has to go pee. The last 2 days his pain has been so intense that we haven't done any range of motion exercises. He says he can really feel the incision. That just gives me the heebies.....It also takes about 30 minutes to get him bathed because A: he can't get around very well and B: he can't get the incision wet. It's been a lot of fun at our house!

It's been really hard seeing my husband in so much pain. He was given a prescription of Lortab for it, but we are big in letting your body heal itself. He only takes the meds when he absolutely can't take it...like last night when he just couldn't sleep.

It sucks knowing that he can't do any of the things that he really loves anymore this summer. I hate that he isn't able to really do anything without tons of pain. It breaks my heart seeing him in pain, I just wish I could take it away from him. However, my love for him has grown so much over the last 3 days. I know that he is strong, and he will come through this amazingly.

Until then, we just hang out at home and watch movies. It's kind of fun just hanging out together.....But too bad about the circumstances that caused it.

Well....Hopefully that satisfies all of you who wondered where I went in the blogging world. I've been busy taking care of my hubby!!