Week 2, day 2: Evening

My sister came over to visit this afternoon. I suggested we go somewhere, because I've been inside the house since the surgery and I needed to get the heck out. I was starting to get sick of spending all this time on my couch.

It was real nice to go outside! F this couch! It was warm and cloudy out. Fitting into the passenger seat was no problem, as I have about 90-95 deg flexion easy now. I moved the seat all the way back and that gave me enough room to flex the leg in.

We drove up to pick up my dry cleaning (been hanging out there for 2 weeks now) and grab some dinner with some beers.

Speaking of beer, I had my first post-op beer Sunday, after I decided to stop taking Percocet. It was a Weyerbacher Slam Dunkel. I followed that up with a Victory Prima Pils. Mmm mmm delicious!

Crutching around for a short distance was fine, from car to restaurant and such--seemed easy enough. However, I did have a stumble where I put more than touch-down bearing weight on my right foot! I lost my balance a little getting out of the car and put about quarter weight or something like that on the right leg. It was certainly not full weight, but it was more than touch down as well. I hope that didn't mess anything up. This is the only such incident so far. I was more careful after that. (And this was before the beers too!)

We decided to take a stroll down the nearby mall, to kill some time before a movie. So I ambulated over a half mile on crutches. Holy arm workout! I'm going to be feeling *sore* tomorrow! I sweat easy and so I had a wet shirt by the time we got to the other end of the mall. My shoulders were certainly not used to this either and my arms were yelling "wtf are you doing buddy?!" And I still had to make my way back! After that, I wasn't feeling a movie.

We decided to go to Starbucks instead and just relax, so my sister took an initiative (as usual) to take some pictures of my sweaty self. So here I am, after over a half mile of crutching:





Yeah, I sweated a lot:



We saw a funny label on one of the machines:



I can't imagine doing 6 weeks of non-weight bearing, as is the case in many knee surgeries that require meniscus-related procedures. I have 3 more days before the follow-up with the surgeon, where I will hopefully get to drop my crutches.

Finally, my sister mentioned an interesting tidbit that happened in the pre-operation room on the day of the surgery. When the surgeon walked in, I had a list of questions prepared to ask. This was moments before I got the "six pack of beer" IV injection and was carted off. I was told that I'd have the opportunity to ask the Dr questions before the operation, so this was it. According to my sister, when the surgeon saw me clutching a paper with a list of questions, he gave one of the nurses a "here we go, what's he got here?" kinda look. As in "can you believe he has a list there" type of look. Just a funny tidbit.