I was all set up for surgery scheduled at 2pm on Friday, December 17th . I had surgery at St. Alexius in Hoffman Estates, Illinois and my surgeon was Dr. Howard Freedburg. He performed a double bundle ACL reconstruction with a hamstring graft.
I'll go through what all happened the day of as accurately as I can. Some parts are a little hazy due to the anesthetics and drugs they were giving me.
So I showed up around noon to get the check in and prep stuff done before getting on the actual table. It started out with me having to change into some puke green colored gown and I had to get out of my illinois jersey, untouchables five shorts, and comfy wool socks. I was in a waiting room with my own tv so i was watching sportcenter while I waited. I was mostly worried about flashing the people walking by my junk so i made sure to keep the blanket covering me.
They first started me out with an IV of just fluids, but would be used later for more anesthetics. Then the "team" of anesthiologists (sp?) to start phase 1 of my drugging process. This first phase was called a femoral nerve block i think and its purpose was to numb my whole right leg from the hip down. She first had to do an ultrasound to place it correctly and then shoot me up with some big needles that i decided not to watch. Theres a small bruise on my groin where it went in that leaves me to believe it was pretty big. Sometime during all of this the nurse came in and shaved my right knee which was a weird sight. Then i was visited by my surgeon, Dr Howard Freedburg and he autographed my right knee with a sharpie in very large writing saying "YES!" to make sure that they didnt slice open the wrong knee.
After this they started the second phase of anesthetics and this is also where is starts getting fuzzy. They were wheeling me over to the surgery room where they transfered me to the other table and shot the rest of the drugs into the IV. It was very very cold in the surgery room and the last thing i remember them doing was putting some blankets on me that felt like they had just come out of the dryer, so that was nice.
I then woke up pretty groggy in another room that looked similar to my waiting room from before but as I looked past the curtain I could tell that it wasnt the same one. I noticed that my right leg was much bigger than my left, it was because i had a large wrap, brace, and some ice on it. Although i was still pretty numb from the surgery drugs, the nurse gave me my first round of hydrocodone which helped with the pain. I napped for another hour or so and then I got dressed back into my jersey and 5ive shorts, i got to rolla round in a wheelchair for a few minutes before my dad got to the ramp.
He picked me up and put me in the backseat of the van and we went home, but not before heading to portillos for some cheese fries and a chopped salad. This was all around 7 or 8pm Sadly my hunger wasnt as big as it had seemed. I only ate about half of my fries. I moved down to my set up that i have in my basement. It was pretty hard to fall asleep for anymore than 5 minutes at a time. Another anoying side effect which is from the anesthetics i think is that its difficult to pee. Something about the nerve block or something. its just another annoying thing that i have to deal with.
I didnt get any real sleep until 5am the following morning until about 9am.
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