It's funny how good I felt the day of surgery. Getting out of the hospital, I was really feeling good and not much pain. I really thought it wasn't going to be that big of a deal going back to work. The thought actually crept into my mind about going back in for the afternoon. Especially since the guys on my team and I are pretty overloaded with work and another designer in our group just left for a new job, too. But, I did as I was told and went home and rested. Good decision.
I know I've talked about the first few days, so I won't go back into that at all. But now having been back at work for two days with my leg immobilized and walking around with either no crutch or just one, the days are really taking it out of me. I'm a really active guy, so I figured a little extra precaution and taking extra time to get things done because of my knee wouldn't drain that much out of me, but boy was I wrong.
Monday wasn't too bad, albeit it was a long day. I moved my desk back down with the rest of my team and I now have a seat with a view! But moving a lot of my stuff was tough. However, my boss and fellow-designer did do the heavy lifting of bringing down my Mac tower and monitors, as well as my backup battery, so that saved a bunch. I just had to empy out my drawers and load up my utensils and rearrange them back at my new desk.
The doctors that did my surgery had told me, in general, most people will take the next week off of work, then go back slowly. I really didn't have this option. Had I done that, I would have left my boss to man the front alone, because the other designer was leaving for vacation on Tuesday, and with our excessive workload, it would have been a nightmare. So I decided to buck up, take my pain meds, and get work done to help him out.
What really surprised me was how much I actually move around at work. I know it's a desk job, but if you stop to think about how many times you shift your weight around or turn your chair, it's quite a lot. And for me, each movement means readjusting. I'm either putting pressure on a few spot on my leg because of the brace, or I'm putting my hip in an uncomfortable location that makes my lower back start to ache. There's really no winning. So by the end of the day, I'm beat. All I want to do is go home, lay down, eat food, and decompress. But I stil need to elevate my leg for a while, take the brace and wrap off to let it air out and help alleviate the swelling, and try to get some icing done. Which is illustrated in the pictures below.
The nice thing is having the ice machine that I can just wrap on to my leg that you can see in the second image. Instead of strapping cold and hard ice to my leg, this pumps ice cold water from a cooler through the tubes and around my leg into a gell-like container that wraps all the way around my leg. So it constantly feeds through col water. Having everything off except the dressing (image 1) is nice to let my leg breathe and also do one of the exercises I mentioned last time. Putting my heel on the pillow and letting my knee use gravity to straighten out. It's a welcome relief from having my knee slightly bent throughout the day. Then when I'm back in bed, (image 3) the brace goes back on for another night of uncomfortable sleep. For some reason I can't get good sleep. Even with the pain meds, I wake up hot, uncomfortable, and frustrated a handful of times each night. The worst part, I know, is that the more sleep I can get, the better my body can heal. So I'm feeling like the lack of elevation at work, and lack of sleep is somewhat compounding on top of each other. I'm hoping to make up for it this weekend by not doing much. But we'll have to see!
-Dave
Comments