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Wednesday, March 24, 2010

Doctor appointments & frustrations

Well I went to the doctor yesterday morning for my post op follow up. I had a few questions about the soreness and swelling that I needed to ask.

He informed me he had to take all of my cartilage because as he was trying to fix the damage it was literally cracking and disinegrating (sp?) so the swelling and soreness he expected. He also took the fatty pad right below my knee cap because it was bruised and cracked and I kept getting tendinitis in it. Hmmm, that explains it I suppose. I have to be on crutches until at least Sunday and if the swelling isn't gone then I have to continue using them.

I also wanted to ask why I have not been able to lift my leg to elevate it; I have to literally lift my leg with my arm & it feels really heavy. He had me try to lift it in his office & informed me that it looks like my quadricep tendon is shutting down. This is the main tendon that was severed during the accident and I had to have repaired before. It is the tendon that runs from the front of your thigh, over your knee cap and attaches to your shin to make everything work together....in other words, not the best tendon in your body to have shut down.

I have to go back to him in 3 weeks, start physical therapy next week after the swelling goes down some. I will be doing physical therapy twice a week for four weeks and hopefully that will make my tendon work again. If not, I will have to have a knee replacement this summer because there is nothing left for him to do. If it does help he still thinks I will have a knee replacement within the next 3 years since I am now bone on bone & it will be very painful! Not great news, but I could've had an infection & lost my leg so it's not the worse news either.

I do still have to go for the second opinion this Friday, I just found out about an hour ago! The lawyer for the other insurance company said, "we know she just had surgery, but that really has nothing to do with us so she needs to be there or we will pay for nothing!" It's all a big game to them & I hope they have fun playing it because all they are doing is fueling my fire! I'll go and play their little game, but I will not injure myself further for them, so I really hope I'm not expected to do too much. Oh, and I'll still be on crutches so I'm sure it'll look like I'm just trying to milk it, but at this point I don't care. I did nothing wrong and will not apologize to anyone!

So there's my update and my venting....you all are great listeners! :)

1 comment:

Angela said...

Oh sounds painful.

Well at least you have the crutches, just wack the lawyers with them.
:)