Christy and I celebrated our 6th anniversary on Aug. 28th of this year. In those 6 years Christy has had 8 surgeries (6 orthopedic and 2 c-sections). She's had her left wrist operated on 3 times: 1) Removal of hardware (from a previous ulnar shortening surgery before we met), 2) scapholunate ligament repair 3) a partial fusion. Her right shoulder has undergone the following 2 surgeries: 1) subacromial decompression and SLAP lesion repair and 2) a biceps tenodesis. And most recently she tore her medial meniscus in her right knee requiring a partial menisectomy. Each time she has surgery I just pray that things will go right, since I'm the pessimist of the family and I work in the hospital and see daily all the things that can potentially go wrong with surgery, so naturally I'm fearful each time she "goes under". Well my fears came to fruition this last surgery.
On September 28th Christy had a partial menisectomy on her right knee. This means she had a torn piece of cartilage in her knee that was removed. The doctor said she would "be back to herself and feeling great" in 2 weeks. He even told us she wouldn't need crutches but of course I got them "just in case". The first few days were uneventful but then Christy began to complain that her calf was severely hurting. I told her to call the doctor immediately fearing a blood clot could be a possibility and unfortunately I was right. Christy had an ultrasound of her leg and was found to have a DVT (deep vein thrombosis). She was started on Warfarin (better known as Coumadin) and Lovenox (a low molecular weight heparin injection). She had to inject her stomach twice a day causing severe bruising (as seen below).
Christy's brother Matt is in the Navy and has been in Iraq since January and was coming home for a couple weeks before returning to Iraq. It was very important to Christy to be able to see him so we had planned on going to California from Oct 6th-13th to visit her family. We spoke with the doctors and they agreed it would be okay for Christy to travel. We had to schedule an appt. in California at a lab to have her blood drawn to check her Coumadin levels, but that was no big deal. The trip down in the mini-van was uneventful but Christy soon began to have excruciating pain in her knee. It was very swollen and she could not bear any weight. On Saturday morning Christy woke me up at 3:30 a.m. and told me she was in so much pain she couldn't bear it anymore so we ended up in St. Mary's Hospital in Victorville, CA. She was given some pain medication and discharged, but after the meds wore off she was no better off.
We made to to the family party and then got in the mini-van and made a beeline for home so we could meet with Christy's surgeon to see what was going on. Poor Christy was so uncomfortable on the way home, but luckily we had the mini-van so Christy could elevate her leg the entire way home. Easton was such an angel and Ryley was good for most the ride, but thank goodness for books on tape and Songs for Wiggleworms (which I sang to while everyone slept). Upon arriving home we immediately took the kids to our friends and drove straight to the ER at St. Mark's where I work. Christy's doctor met us there and drained 75 cc of blood from her knee. She had a severe hemearthrosis (bleeding into her knee joint) caused by the Lovenox shot. Fortunately she felt immediate relief and was able to relax a little. It's been almost 3 1/2 weeks since surgery and Christy just barely got off crutches and started physical therapy (not from me of course, she doesn't listen to a word I say when it comes to therapy).
We have a trip to Orlando planned Nov. 6-13th and I'm hoping Christy will be ready to go by then. I've already said NO MORE surgeries, but we'll see how that goes as we're getting older, not younger and apparently falling apart quickly.
