Surgery Update

As previously posted, Robert made it through his knee replacement surgery with little or no problems. Well, mostly...

You see, they told me that surgery would take about an hour and a half, which I knew to be about a half hour more than reality. Gives them a chance to get him sedated, get things organized, etc.

So, I was pretty surprised when that 90 minutes went by and the surgeon did not appear. And then it became an hour, 45 minutes, than two. Soon it was 2.5 hours. And then the doc appeared, back in his street clothes, crooking his finger at me in a "come here" motion. He headed off to the area where the consultation rooms are.

"Do you like coffee?"

"Yeah???" I said in that suspicious WTF voice.

"Regular or decaf?"

"Regular?" Same voice.

He grabbed the coffee and poured me a cup and waved me into the room.

This is not normal doctor behavior. That plus a two and a half hour surgery made me suspicious that I was about to hear something - what it might be, I couldn't tell, but I was fairly certain I'd know in a couple of minutes. I sipped my coffee.

"I'm really sorry the surgery took longer than anticipated, but I ran into a little problem. However, I want to tell you that Robert got along wonderfully. He's got really strong legs, and the strength of his muscles and tendons should help him recover quickly. There is no doubt whatsoever that the knee needed replacing; it was totally worn out. He must have been in tremendous pain all the time." (He was, btw.)

"But, what is the problem?"

"Well, you see, not only is his leg in marvelous shape, his bone density is tremendous. The reason the surgery took longer is because I went through three complete battery packs on the saw to cut the bone to replace the knee. It certainly is a lot different than doing a knee replacement on a frail, little old lady."

He told me that R would be in recovery for another half hour or so, and then would be sent up to his room. He shook my hand and we left the consultation room.

Two days later, Robert is out of the immobilizer, the drain has been pulled, and he is able to get around a little. He's been running an FUO (fever of unknown origin) and thus, he's had a double set of blood cultures, an ultrasound to check for clots, a chest x-ray to rule out pneumonia, and a urine test. He has a lot of white cells in his urine, but everything else is clear. The white cells seem to indicate the possibility that during his PT sessions he overworked his leg and it bled out, resulting in white cells going to the rescue and creating angst in order to save his leg from the blood which had invaded spaces where blood did not belong. So, he's reacting with a low grade fever. He's been ordered by the doc to only do what the PT tells him to - no extra working out trying to get a head start on therapy. He will probably get out of the hospital on Saturday unless the PT decides all is well tomorrow.

Robert is pretty proud of having a surgery that was out of the norm. We've had some good laughs out of thinking of how the OR staff must have been reacting when they had to go through not only two, but three battery packs.

And, his doc told him that if an 80 year old had the muscles that Robert does, they would absolutely shatter the bones because of the strength.

And...get this. Robert asked if it was possible to get a temporary handicapped sticker while he went through therapy. He was told that not only could he have a permit, it would be a permanent one - seems when you have both knees replaced, they worry about the possibility of a knee getting wrecked up by a fall.

One one hand, I think it's cool to know we've got a handicapped sticker. On the other hand, we need to get ready to be popular at Christmas time when the only available places to park at the mall will be the spaces he'll now be able to park in!