I mentioned in the previous post that at the 4th of July BBQ at The Sharps, Petunia ran right into the side of my knee. After having several sets of x-rays I found out my tibial plateau was fractured and required surgery to repair it.

On July 12th, I had that surgery at Penn. The surgeon begin arthroscopically, but ended up needing to make an incision to tamp the bone back into place, and then two screws were placed beneath it to hold everything together. Unless there’s an issue down the road, those screws will remain in my knee indefinitely.

The surgery was outpatient and took about 2 hours and I was home by the afternoon.

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Below are x-rays from before and after. In the before x-ray you can see that the bone looks a little crushed down on the right (which is actually the left side of my left leg), which was then pushed back into place and held up with screws.

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The first week after surgery I stayed downstairs exclusively and barely moved from the sleeper couch in our living room. Once the nerve block wore off I was in a lot of pain until I got the right combo of pain pills going. After about four days I started feeling better, and after a week I didn’t need to take pain pills anymore.

I have another set of x-rays scheduled for next week and will have a better idea of my recovery plan, but for now I know I’m on crutches for at least six weeks, with little to no pressure on my left leg while the bone heals. It’s been both mentally and physically very challenging, but Dave and the girls have been my hands and legs. And my mom even flew in for five days to help out when Dave had to travel to Chicago (his first travel since the pandemic!).

My 42nd birthday also landed three days after surgery, when I was still pretty immobile on the sleeper couch. So we did a birthday dinner in the living room. As is my birthday tradition, I always have a hamburger, so Dave made a delicious one bedside!