Health

ACL Surgery: Day 1

Anna Blankenheim Health ,

It’s been a long couple of days.

First of all, I survived surgery. Yay! The doctor said it went really well… It was a complete tear that had started to reattach and if I had done any sort of cutting activity, I would have torn it again. 
After a little bit of a meltdown right before surgery, they gave me some wonderful concoction of drugs and the next thing I knew I was here:  

Apparently I’m one of THOSE people under anesthesia and when I woke up I took a swing at a nurse. I don’t remember that, but oops. I didn’t swing at this guy:  

Coming home was rather uneventful and I decided I was hungry. I also had a pretty bad headache. Several saltine crackers and some chicken noodle soup later, I was barfing and then headache was definitely not better. It was a long, rough night and most of today:  My mom, Mike, and the pups have been by my side taking really good care of me. My headache finally went away and I’m getting a little hungry. Hopefully this is the upswing!

I’m overwhelmed with the calls, texts, and messages everyone has sent! Thank you all so much!

More tomorrow!

Subconsciousness

Anna Blankenheim Health , ,

Welp, my brain is definitely working this surgery thing out while I sleep… the other night I had my first surgery nightmare. I woke up in recovery and the doctor told me he had bad news. He had to amputate my whole leg and I needed to learn to ride my horse one legged. Yup folks, apparently that’s the worst thing my brain can think of.

We’re now 11 days away from surgery. I really am kind of excited in a weird way. I miss riding. A LOT. And until I have the surgery, I can’t do it. Really, there’s no other alternative, so at least once I get through the worst of it, I’ll be on the road to recovery and actually healing instead of in this frustrating limbo.

We’ll see how it goes over the next couple weeks! Here’s to some dreamless nights!

A Decision and a Date

Anna Blankenheim Health

My last post about my ACL was one of cautious optimism. I headed into physical therapy with that optimism, but very quickly learned that if I want to get back to the way things were, I’m going to need surgery. In the end, it was a really easy decision.

My surgery is scheduled for Friday, April 22nd. I probably shouldn’t be, but I’m ridiculously excited to actually have a date. It finally feels like things will be back in my hands, that I’ll be in control of my rehab. I can’t wait to get past that first awful week and into physical therapy!

Between now and then, my job one is to get that leg as strong as I can get it. I was amazed at how quickly I lost muscle tone in the two weeks that I was on crutches, something I’m told by my physical therapist will be much worse after surgery. So, I’m working it… quad squeezes, leg lifts, and soon the bike.

Here we go!!!