That Incident on Day 1 (part1)

Ok about that little incident you should try to avoid on the first night after your ACL surgery.

The post-op instructions I received required the patient (or "myself" in this case) to keep a full leg brace on for 72 hours with the knee hinge locked straight. I had every intention of honoring this restriction, when after completeing an hour of icing early on the evening of the 24th, while the leg was fully supported on the sofa, I thought it would be harmless to release the knee lock just to test how it worked. There were two grey plastic buttons that released the hinge, one on each side of the knee. I unlocked them both, with each button emitting a solid click. Bent the knee--a tiny amount--just to see if it was still under control of motor neurons, then straightened to re-lock the both buttons. Thats when an small ordeal began in trying to re-lock one side of the hinge. I could not get it to lock, and I was worried I'd harm something trying to use any extra force or extension on the leg. Alone in the house and stuck on the sofa, I concluded I had no recourse except to contact Kevin O'Conner, the sales rep for the orthotics company. Luckily, he answered his cell phone and, not disclosing by tone of voice how much of an idiot he might have thought he had on the line, said I should take off the brace, then lock it, then strap it back on.

Well, my impulsive clicking of the two gray buttons now had me off on an adventure of post-op rule violations, but if I was careful about it, this seemed safe enough, in addition to being the only way to get myself to the two other points in my little triangular world. Said points being, in order of importance, bathroom and kitchen.

It has to be said that despite the heavy duty pain killers, the psychological state of a surgery patient on day 1 is that everything the surgeon just did is likely to come apart like house of cards with even the slightest jostle. So I took the leg brace off carefully. It took some time because of the myriad velcro straps that loved to velcro themselves into spaghetti when they were loosened. Soon, however, my poor franken-leg was free from the brace, save for an ace wrap, and I could now better fiddle with the recalcitrant hinge lock. This is when it became apparent that something might have actually broken in the mechanism, because I repeatedly failed to lock the thing despite holding it in a perfectly straight position, using not inconsiderable force to help it to latch. I was going to call Kevin O'Conner again, when it finally felt like it locked, and I could begin the slow process of getting the leg braced up again, and moving on to a well deserved bathroom break.