The Countdown

In approximately 42 hours time, I would be lying in the surgery room; unconscious, not knowing what is happening and not being able to influence anything. The outcome would depend entirely on the orthopedic and whether I would get to walk again is all at his mercy.

Well …. Whether I would get to walk again might sound too exaggerated but prior to me signing the indemnity form, he did mention that there is a 1-2% probability that things might not turn out that well. When probed further on what he meant by that, my orthopedic highlighted that there is a slight possibility of infections which would call for prolonged care. Having thought about that for a millisecond, I figured that it couldn’t be that bad and proceeded to sign the indemnity form and followed up with the pre-admission procedures.

Afterall, how bad can “fixing a wrong be?” Having busted my knee in a football game about 2 and a half months back, walking was just not the same anymore. I could feel the strain in my knee each time I tried to take a bigger step and I could hardly bend my knees. Not to mention that my right knee had been swollen since that fateful day which so happened to be the day marking my 29 years of existence. Come to think of it, I should have taken up the offer to go for dinner and drinks instead of choosing to be running around a field, chasing for a ball with 21 other adrenaline-pumped males. I guess we all do make mistakes and the price I have to pay for my mistake is a torn meniscus and anterior cruciate ligament. These two torn ligaments were nice enough to bring along company and the freebie that was being thrown-in in my case were some blood clot around the knee. How nice… Buy 2, get 1 free!

I had been procrastinating on the need to go for treatment and had in fact conveniently forgotten about some medical appointments prior to this. Nonetheless, the temptation of wanting to start chasing after the ball again got the better of me and I had no other option but to have it fixed or risk not being able to run around on a field again. This was nicely summed up in a sentence explaining why some would choose to go for surgery as I was doing a search on Wikipedia to find out more about the procedures and possible complications.

"Surgical options may be used if the knee gives way during typical daily activities, showing functional instability, or if the patient is unable to refrain from participating in high-risk activities ever again." (Source: Wikipedia)

Now that I have set an appointment for the surgery as well as done pre-booking for the accommodation, I guess the only thing left to be done is to pack my trusted crutches that had served me well on more than one occasion. Perhaps, I should start practicing walking with 3 legs again since that’s probably what I would need to be doing over the next couple of weeks.

By noon on Wednesday, I would go through an arthroscopy procedure whereby I will have a small fiber-optic camera known as an endoscope inserted into my knee through an incision. I would also have some fluid being “pumped” into my knee through another incision. I was also informed that other miniature instruments would be inserted to perform the surgery and this is considering the fact that I had already gone through a magnetic resonance imaging procedure just a few days back. All these seems “Greek” to me and I’m sticking to my notion that the medical profession has funny ways to describe simple things which at times is a wee bit too much for someone with a low vocabulary like me. Having so many instruments shoved into my knee sounds real congested and it’ll probably be like Federal Highway during peak hours. Thankfully, I’ll be on anesthetics and in deep slumber when all these funny insertions via incisions are being done.

The countdown had started and I’m already looking forward to when I can start chasing after the ball again!