Post-Surgery - Day 5

Day 5 is the exciting day where my bandages got to come off.  Which was a really good thing because they were half off by the time I got from the bedroom to the living room, and had fallen completely down to my ankle by the time I got to the kitchen to pick up a pair of scissors.  I was pleasantly surprised by how small my incisions are - I've seen some pretty substantial sized ones in my trips down the #aclsurgery hashtag on instagram.

The biggest thing thus far today has been swelling above my knee.  The irony of it is that this is how I was misdiagnosed repeatedly and played 4.5 years of hockey/football/strongman/etc. on no ACL and a couple meniscal tears.  It seems like overnight this swelling increased a bit, and it looks super funky when I do my flexion exercises.  I can also feel the tightness when I walk.  Hoping to make it recede a little with today's icing regime, but we'll see how it plays out.

Pretty much confirmed today that I react to toradol in much the same way as T3 in that I become emotionally irrational far quicker than I should.  Soooo...I'll be cutting out meds now and switching to advil, as I can't really afford to be crying over random problems when I go back to work.  Sanity...important!

My pain levels aren't high by any means, but I do find I'm feeling things more than I was the first few days.  It could be because I haven't been taking very many meds or it could just be general owie feelings.  I notice it most when I stand up and the blood rushes back down into my leg.

Pretty sure I was past 90 flexion today, so that's great.  I think my knee extension work is getting better as well.  I think my gait is going to be the hardest for me to fix in terms of the extension you should hit to start a stride - I have six months of really bad gait patterns to undo.