Home from surgery and resting. Everything went well. I walked out of the clinic without a problem. Here are some photos tsken off of the arthoscopic camera as it paraded around inside my knee.
Right in the middle of this shot, you can see some of the fraying cartilege.
Here is clearly a frayed loose piece of cartilege floating around getting in the way of normal knee movement.
In this shot, you can see the tool on the right which has just gone in and zapped, chopped, pureed, or something the loose cartilege piece and sucked it up.
On the right center of this shot you can see how the cartilege has been noticeably worn away.
Here’s all sorts of crap floating around in the knee (I believe the bubbles are actually generated by the tool doing its job, they aren’t typically there).
In this last shot, the tool in the lower right corner has just finished snipping away at the cartilege between 5 and 6 on the clock dial. The thing looks like PacMan the way that it snips away at the cartilege. I think the idea is to create a cleaner non frayed edge to the cartilege.
The doctor actually gave me a 15 minute cd video of the operation as seen through the camera that these still were taken from. It’s quite fascinating to watch. If Gary has enough room to host a 0.5 GB file, I’ll send him a copy and we’ll upload it for all to watch. It sure beats the simple old xray that I got the last time I had my knee operated on 40 years ago.
I feel really good. The pain is quite minimal, probably less than what I have been normally experiencing. I’ve got a bunch of Vicodin tablets that he prescribed for any pain but I currently don’t see any need to take them. There’s a Spikes baseball game tonight and I’m really tempted to go, I feel so well. The doc said I was cleared to go to the game tomorrow but I didn’t even think to ask him about tonight. He did say to take it easy today but I’m figuring sitting in a seat at a baseball game can’t be all that much of a strain. The game isn’t until 7:00 so I have a while before I have to decide.