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ACL Surgery Recovery - Day 12
(walking again!)
June 9th, 2003 - My how times have changed since my last journal entry. When I last wrote, I was limping around everywhere on crutches in pain every time I had to go somewhere. Now I feel much, much better. After about 3-4 days of using both crutches, I was able to use 1 crutch. Then after using 1 crutch for a couple of days, I started feeling comfortable walking with the immobilizer brace and no crutches at all.
Scarring has gone down significantly, and it looks like I won't have any huge scars. I am very suprised about this. I stopped wearing bandaids about 2-3 days ago because all the cuts have scabbed over and look pretty clean. I am pretty amazed at the speed of recovery of the cuts. UPDATE: Jan 06, 2007 - I only really have one noticable scar from the surgery. It got a little darker after the scabs came off. I posted pictures in the 3.5 year update.
Swelling has gone down as well. I've been taking ibuprofen to try to help reduce it, and I've also been walking around in the swimming pool. It's much easier to move underwater and there's a lot of resistence on the leg but at the same time you feel almost weightless. The swimming pool seems to help immensely. The day after I went to the pool, the knee shrank noticeably so that I can actually see my kneecap instead of a big swollen mass.
Everyone at work is kind of amazed at the speed of my recovery and they get mad at me because I am not using crutches. I think a lot of them had surgery on their knees 10 years ago when they were my age, so they are used to slow recovery times b/c of the older methods of surgery. I am very fortunate to have had the chance for this new procedure.
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