Our New Family Member

So early Monday morning Matt went into the hospital for surgery and later that afternoon we came home with a new family member: his new ACL. ACL replacement involves cutting open the knee, taking out the old torn up ACL (the muscle that runs vertically up the center of your knee behind the kneecap, and which gives your knee its stability), grafting a new muscle in its place, and closing you back up. The replacement muscle can either come from your own hamstring or from a cadaver. Matt chose the later--hence the addition of a third member of our marriage, whom we've named Zombie Sam. In his former life, Sam was someone's achilles tendon. But now he's been reanimated as Matt's new ACL. Hopefully he'll be happy with us, make himself cozy, and result in Matt being able to jump and play like a real boy once more! As for now, though, he keeps pretty still. Mostly because it hurts like heck. While the surgeon was in there he was also able to repair a torn meniscus (the cushiony stuff in your knee joint that keeps your bones from rubbing against each other--owie). That was a nice surprise, but it also makes the recovery a little longer and more difficult because now he can't put any weight at all on the leg for 2 weeks. Oy. Here's his leg brace. It weighs, oh, maybe a million pounds. Several times a day we take it off and Matt bends his knee gently about 10 times. It hurts a lot. Here's his nifty little "bag of joy," aka a device that pumps numbing solution through a tiny little catheter inserted in his knee. Later today we have to remove his dressings and I have to pull that "tiny little" catheter out. Something tells me Matt isn't going to think it feels "tiny" or "little." Which is why we're putting it off and haven't done it yet. Here's his Iceman. It's a souped up Igloo cooler.I fill it with ice and water, plug it into the cold pack in his dressings, turn it on, and it circulates ice water around his knee. It's our friend and we want to keep it forever. But if we had to choose between it and Vicodin, we'd pick Vicodin. We heart it a bunch.