Stitches out!

Post op day 10

Ack! I'm falling behind on my blogging.

So yesterday was post op day ten and therefore time to get ye olde stitches taken out. I made an appointment with my doctor and Steve, who came back into town for the weekend, drove me up to Yonge and Eglinton where my doctor is.

I sat in the waiting room and some lady struck up conversation with me. Having this leg thing is kind of interesting. People are not at all shy to ask me what happened to me, or what's wrong with my leg, or to make jokes about taking care of my leg. If it were my permanent condition I wonder how that would feel...

The stitch removing was a breeze. Though my doctor didn't actually know how to do it. She used the tweezers provided by the surgeon to tug gently on the bottom blue string that was sticking out. Nothing happened. She tugged on the top. Still nothing. So she went to ask her colleague. As they were walking back towards my examination room I heard her saying, "...so maybe I should just tug a little harder? I don't know..." He came in, glanced at my knee and said, "yup, just pull harder." Great. She pulled harder on the bottom string and slowly the blue stitch on the top started to disappear. The stitches were all internal so when finally it was all out, it looked crimped from the work it was doing inside. It's kind of crazy that it's safe to just pull that out and there's no damage to the healing. I'd guess there were about 8 to 10 internal stitches in there.

The rest of the day I was quite active. We went to get lunch and I sat on a bench seat, we went to a grocery store and an eye-glasses store and I hobbled around. We went to Steve's parent's house and I sat mostly but also walked up and down stairs, around a backyard, and to other places. We stopped at the mall to return something and I went into the store, and finally I sat at his grandmother's dinner table alternating my knee between un-braced and bent, foot resting on the ground, and leg supported up on a chair beside me.

By halfway through the dinner my leg was very uncomfortable and did not like to stay in any of those positions for longer than a few minutes. By the time we got back downtown to my place I was in actual pain and discomfort, and unable to to my last set of exercises for the night.

:(

I'll try to take it easy today and tomorrow so I can be in top shape for my physio appointment Monday.