Posts Tagged track
This weekend I…
Posted by Matt in general, microfracture on April 5, 2009
… rode outside for the first time since the surgery. This was a huge step forward and I had been waiting too long.
Over the past week or two I had been getting really restless. The hour on the trainer every day gave me a workout, but the weather was starting to turn. Spending nearly 95% of my time indoors over the past seven months was starting to really get to me. As goes the quote from “Office Space,” “Human beings were not meant to sit in little cubicles staring at computer screens all day,” which was pretty much what I have been doing. I would walk back and forth from the Computer Science office and that was about it in terms of getting outside. Something was about to give.
It gave this weekend. The Colonial Relays was this weekend, and on Friday I walked over from the office and watched some of the distance races. The hour or so that I was out there had been the longest I’d been outside in quite a long time. That night, I went back and talked to a few of my teammates and alumni that had come back to watch. It was a great change of pace and was good to see everyone run. I talked to a lot of people that I hadn’t talked to in months, some even longer than that. A lot of people asked me when I would try running again, since the doctors have given me the okay to start. I replied that I wasn’t sure, but it would be soon. In talking to my old teammates, I had forgotten what I had left behind. For quite awhile, I’ve been in my own really tiny world, working on my projects.
Until now, the only times I would be shocked back into reality was when I would be having a discussion with my adviser in the late afternoon. We would be having a discussion on the whiteboard in his office and I would happen to glance out the window and see all my teammates run by in a blur. It’s a real kick in the butt to see that and remember what I used to do. In the world of computer science, the atmosphere is mellow, but determined. In the world that I came from, it’s about getting on the track and suffering. Unfortunately, in the context in which I live now, I don’t think anyone says, “I really dominated in that conference paper.” You don’t sweat and breathe hard while thinking up and coding a slick algorithm.
On Saturday, I got up, ate breakfast and prepared to do what I had done since before Thanksgiving: get on the trainer and pound away for about an hour. I would open the window, turn on the fan, and listen to music while I looked outside at the law students coming and going from the library. But on Saturday, the sun was shining and it was getting warm. I couldn’t take it any longer: it was time to go out.
It was about the best feeling I’ve ever had. I was uncaged, released into the wild, my natural habitat. I hauled it out past the state park at York River. The weather said the wind was blowing 30 mph gusts from the west, but I didn’t notice a thing. I powered up hills where over the summer I remember being exhausted and downshifting into the lowest gear. I remember trying to upshift, only to look down and see there were no more gears to use. A dog bolted out from its house and chased after me for nearly a quarter mile, but I kept it at bay. I turned around right before the road ended at the river. As I got closer to home, I never got tired. I looped around campus and got to the track just in time to watch the 4×800.
Yesterday was the first day in months that I didn’t do any work before dinner. I still did a little before I went to bed, so I couldn’t call it a complete day off. I was outside at the meet all day and got a nasty sunburn. I guess that happens when you don’t have a built up tolerance from running or biking outside every day. I watched all the distance relays and hung out with everyone some more. By the end of the day, I was exhausted. On the bike, I’d gone 45 minutes over an hour, and despite feeling much easier than the trainer, was enough to make me not want to move for most of the afternoon.
Today I went out again, but took it easier. I was definitely more tired today and felt more normal as compared with pre-surgery rides.
As for my knee, I was out of the saddle several times and really hammered up some hills without any real discomfort. I might have felt something this afternoon walking around, but I can’t be sure. I do know, that if my knee could handle what I did today and yesterday, I’m pretty sure I’ll be able to do at least some running. Sometime soon, the same thing will happen with biking outdoors and I’ll just start running on a whim. It won’t take much to push me over the edge.
I finally broke down and got a new bike. For awhile, I’ve been worried that the rear cogs are so worn that someday I’ll go up a hill and the chain will just rip off. I tried a few new bikes out at the bike shop, the first one being a Specialized aluminum frame. It felt like my old one, nothing really special about it. But, I tried a Giant TCR-0 with a carbon frame and it felt like a rocket. It was an unused 2006 and I think I got a pretty good deal on it since equivalent new models of just about every manufacturer go for about $1000 more. I’d been to bike shops quite a bit in the past few years and I don’t often see anything older or discounted. It seems most owners keep a limited stock. The components had been switched up and have a combination of Shimano Ultegra and 105. I really don’t need the way high end components since I don’t care too much about saving some fraction of an ounce of weight. As it is, the bike feels like a feather compared to the steel Bianchi. Since my shoes and pedals were a mess, I went ahead and replaced those. Hopefully I’ll be able to try out the bike before the weather crashes this week.
If I can bike or even run outside more often it will provide more of a balance to my life. I really can’t just hole up and work all day — there’s got to be a balance to the equation. The recent discussion about goofing off boosting productivity probably has some merit in it. Biking or running isn’t really goofing off, but it provides the same release.
Pandora Radio: Mixed bag
I’ve decided to branch out from my usual Internet Radio fix and experiment with Pandora. There’s been a lot of rave reviews out there, and I recall reading a Slashdot article about the data mining algorithms that go into determining your preferences (or maybe that was Last.fm). I’ll probably mess around with Last.fm to see the differences, since Pandora definitely has its highlights and drawbacks.
The interface is great since I just have to fire up a web browser and cookies automatically log me in. There’s no messing around with a software mp3 player and picking out the correct format so the player can interpret the stream. Sound quality is okay, but it seems that some tracks are better than others.
Nearly all the reviews I read said that Pandora was excellent in picking out songs they liked. I don’t entirely agree with this. In the web-based interface, you name an artist or song you like and Pandora plays music based on particular musical qualities of the artist or song. It seems that for me, when I name an artist or song in my existing mp3 archive, one of three things happens, each with about equal probability:
1. Pandora plays a song I’ve already got in my mp3 collection. Many times it isn’t even the same artist of the initial artist/song I specified, which makes it kind of weird. It would appear as though the preferences/data mining engine is almost too good, but this definitely isn’t always the case.
2. Pandora plays something that seems almost completely orthogonal to what I specified. For example, I put in Bruce Springsteen and it played something from Megadeth with lots of screaming and out of control percussion. I’m not sure how this relationship was determined, but it definitely didn’t give me what I wanted.
3. I actually hear something new that sounds similar to the artist/song I put in. In these cases, there definitely seems to be a relationship between the original song or artist I specified and what Pandora plays. This is the case I would prefer.
Pandora definitely doesn’t live up to all the hype — its preference/similarity determination seems to be either spot on or way off. Most of the time it seems to work, but I would rather hear something new than something I’ve already got in my mp3 collection (of course Pandora doesn’t know this). That’s one of the reasons I’ve been listening to Radio Paradise — they play all kinds of stuff I’ve never heard before and a wide enough variety to keep me coming back. One of the big features of Last.fm is that it can determine your preferences from your existing collection, so I may have to give that a try to see the differences. It seems that like most of these “Web 2.0″ apps, the data mining and social aggregation algorithms sort of work, but not enough to be really cool.
Microfracture: +19 weeks
Posted by Matt in microfracture on January 5, 2009
Not much going on with respect to my knee. I’m still continuing my leg strengthening routine with leg weights and biking with the resistance trainer. I was on my feet for a few hours again over the weekend and again noticed that I was more tired than before the surgery had I done the same thing. Maybe it’s the biking, but it’s hard to tell. Regardless, it’s a far cry from the daily fatigue I faced while running on the track and cross country teams. Some guys used to hate it, but at the time I really didn’t care — it was just something I dealt with. Now, I’m starting to realize how much effort it took to get through practice every day and how ransacked I got after nearly every workout and race. Tiredness for me now equates to about the level of tiredness I faced during the first few weeks of a new training cycle when I was on the team.
I still have occasional pain in my left knee, which is probably just the IT band again, but sometimes I think I feel something in the joint. I’ve been stretching more after biking to help keep everything loose before I get in front of the computer for most of the day. I spend about 15 minutes or so now, which is better than when I first started biking, where some days I wouldn’t stretch at all. I really should do more so that I can adjust better if I bike more or start running. If I start biking on the roads for any significant amount of time or add in running, I could be in trouble with not stretching enough. Plenty of typical soft tissue injuries could be in store for me if I don’t watch out.
I drove the Mustang again yesterday for the second time since I’ve had the surgery. I’m planning on driving it again more now that I can handle it, but it still has me worried whenever I put my foot on the clutch. Each time I even touch the clutch I think about the popping and pain that ensued prior to the surgery. It’s like going down stairs was for awhile. I just have to overcome the fear, but at the same time I wonder if the clutch is going to wear down the fibrocartilage in my knee in the same way that running might. I will gradually drive it more and see how it goes. I may throw in the towel if I start to get discomfort.
Microfracture: +17 weeks
Posted by Matt in microfracture on December 23, 2008
No news is good news, I suppose.
It seems that my knee is doing fine with the exception of some minor tracking issues — it’s almost as if the joint is “looser” than before. I’m doing about 45 minutes hard on the bike every day along with some other free weight leg exercises I picked up from the PT. My PT appointments have gone down to once per week, which is good since it’s getting old doing that.
I think a few more weeks to a month at most and I’ll be confident about starting a return to running program. By that time everyone will have returned for the spring semester and I could try hooking up with my old coach or the athletic trainer about stuff to watch out for as I start running again. Both of them dealt with other athletes with microfracture so they could provide me with guidance as I go. It seems that the PT was/is rushing me back to running so I can be released from them, but I don’t get why they just don’t cut me loose. Rushing this is a really bad idea. My pre-surgery past self would have tried rushing back to running as quickly as possible, but I really don’t want to wind up back at square one and require another surgery right off the bat. I’m sure my coach and the athletic trainer wouldn’t mind talking to me a few minutes per week about how things are going.
I return to the doctor next week so I will see what he says about everything now that I am over four months post-op.
School can be more than an education…
…but academics come first.
Another Flat Hat article got my attention, this time about the difficulties of performing well in school while competing in intercollegiate sports. The author, a student-athlete, states that here at William and Mary, a divide exists between athletes and non-athletes. From my experience and the author’s, this divide seems to exist for two reasons.
The first reason is that due to time constraints between school and practice/traveling for competition, athletes self-segregate from other students. Going to class, practice, and doing homework consumed all my (and my teammates’) time and energy, leaving almost no time for any kind of social life. What little free time we had was spent with our roommates, who were also teammates. Living, studying, sleeping, eating, traveling, suffering through workouts, and showering with 40 other guys was enough of a social activity that we didn’t need anyone else. In fact, very few of us had friends or even girlfriends who were not on the team. Anyone who hung out with other non-teammate friends was seen as the odd one out.
Those who wanted to do well in races and in school didn’t do much else except practice and study. If you tried to squeeze in late night parties every week, your performances in school and running suffered. I’ve seen this happen to several teammates, who tried going out on weekends only to bomb tests and races. Anyone who wanted to compete effectively without hurting their grades had to make some sacrifices. Consequently, a lot of non-athletes see us as weird. My sister says my teammates stick out in the already nerdy William and Mary population like a sore thumb: “they’re skinny, don’t drink, have a shaved head…”
Since high school, my coaches have always said that we are students first and athletes second. If school is taking a hit, we should back off on the running. For me, it never came to that, but a few teammates during my five years of eligibility did quit the team citing academics. Nearly everyone on the team set high standards for themselves academically, and few failed to hit these standards. Almost everyone on the team that’s graduated since I’ve been here has gone on to graduate school of some sort, many to law or medical school. There aren’t many student-athletes at William and Mary that I’ve met that haven’t done well academically, but this high level of academic performance seems to be the exception, rather than the norm.
At other schools, student-athletes really do seem to live up to the “dumb jock on scholarship” stereotype. USA Today reported on how nearly all student-athletes on DI football and basketball teams major in the same discipline, usually something like “social sciences,” or “management.” They pick the easy way out to keep their grades high enough to compete and somehow many of them still fail to graduate. This is where NCAA policy should really push towards getting a useful degree not just “majoring in eligibility.” Those that do graduate “have been hesitant to cite their degree on job applications,” since their major was worthless.
The thought of incompetent athletes flunking out of the easiest classes really hits a nerve with the average William and Mary student, who most likely busts his or her butt to get through Organic Chemistry. Odds are that student’s classmates are also members of the basketball, tennis, track, and football teams, among others. William and Mary boasts a nearly 100 percent graduation rate with all of its teams and 36 Academic All-Americans since 1992.
Money is the second reason for the athlete and non-athlete divide. In the comments section of the article, a lot of students believe that the teams at William and Mary get their budgets and athletic scholarships entirely from the $1,259 per year athletic fee tacked on to tuition. They feel cheated that their tuition money is going to pay for others’ athletic scholarships. This is hardly the case. All athletic scholarships are funded from endowments and alumni donations, not from tuition. Without a strong alumni base, the athletic programs would be nonexistent. One commenter mused that he wasn’t able to use the athletic fields or run on the new track because priority went to athletic teams. Again, those fields and the new track were paid entirely by alumni donations, which specified their use for athletics. With respect with complaints about the athletic fee in general, there are plenty of fees that I pay in my tuition that go towards school programs that I never took advantage of. There are also plenty of government programs that I pay for in my taxes that I never use, either.
To me, non-athletes complain about athletic scholarships in the same manner that out-of-state students complain about in-state tuition. Out-of-state students had a choice to attend a public school in their own state and pay less money, but they didn’t (they also don’t pay VA state tax). Non-athletes had a choice to work hard in a sport in high school and potentially get an athletic scholarship, but they didn’t. As for athletic slotting, plenty of non-athletes get accepted in the same manner, but due to their socioeconomic status.
At William and Mary, we have our cake and eat it too. We can be successful students while kicking butt as athletes.
School isn’t about getting an education anymore
Increasingly, nobody seems to think the main purpose of school (especially college) is to learn and prepare for a career. It seems that college is becoming less of a place to get an education and more of some kind of camp where you go for four years. It’s not about learning as it is about the “experience.” I’ve been on this issue for some time and it only seems to be getting worse. Yesterday the Flat Hat had an interesting piece about one of the Deans of Admissions and admission policy. It used to be that admissions were based on high school GPA, difficulty of classes taken, SAT scores, and your essay. Now, according to one of the assistant deans, admissions considers:
“…all aspects of diversity, including socioeconomic, gender, race, disabilities, sexual orientation, geographic location and ethnicity.”
Aren’t all these “diversity” issues things that the admissions staff shouldn’t even know about when someone applies? Academic performance should dominate all other factors in deciding admission, and only after someone has the academic credentials and is accepted should any socioeconomic or monetary factors come into play. Truthfully, I don’t think that an applicant’s name should be on a college application: the admissions process should be completely blind to any external factors such as gender or race. The requirement that a student have some kind of college “experience” with a diversity quota seems to be overpowering the idea that going to school is about learning job and career skills. No wonder so many college students graduate and go back to menial jobs: it’s not about learning career skills anymore. It’s about the “experience.”
The Associate Dean of Admissions goes on to say that affirmative action “should be applied not just in grades K-12, but from the day a child is born.” I can’t believe she said that — especially coming from someone in her position. It’s the “spread the wealth around” mantra. It completely kills the incentive for anyone to work hard or accomplish anything. Those that have some property of “diversity” don’t have to prove their worth since they will get what they want based on their status. Those that aren’t in one of the “diverse” categories won’t have any incentive to apply to the schools they want to or to get good grades in high school since they know the admissions slots will go to those that meet specific diversity criteria.
The DoG Street Journal had an editorial recently illustrating the consequences of continuing these policies. The author argues that while there is still a gender gap in wage, that gap has reversed itself with respect to high school dropout and college admission rates. Following these trends, it is certain that the wage gap in gender will soon reverse itself as well. But, heaven forbid someone starts a movement to protect men’s rights. Those with the special privileges will fight hard to keep them, even after whatever divide they faced is long gone.
And fight they will, because those in control want to milk these policies for all they’re worth. Title IX was originally aimed at ensuring that women had an equal opportunity to attend college. With college admissions and attendance no longer a factor, the new focus is intercollegiate athletics. After JMU two years ago, Delaware, another school in our conference (CAA) is considering giving track and cross country the axe because of Title IX. Under Title IX, schools must try to have a ratio of women’s to men’s roster spaces that is representative of the entire student population. Thanks to football, this really throws things for a loop. Since most schools desperately want to cling on to a football team that incurs the school a net loss in expenditures, administrators have no choice but to cut other men’s sports. They do this despite the fact that equal opportunity does not equivocate to equal demand.
It is obvious that education is the key to solving any socioeconomic imbalances, but the key to doing so and generating a productive and globally competitive society is to reward those who work the hardest instead of those who happen to have some special property.
About
Posted by Matt in Uncategorized on November 12, 2008
I am a Computer Science graduate student under Professor Gang Zhou at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. My research is with wireless sensor networks and embedded systems.
As an undergraduate, I also attended William and Mary and was a member of the varsity cross country and track teams. In 2008, I suffered a cartilage tear in my knee, requiring microfracture surgery. While I have returned to running, my days of hard core competition are most likely over. Instead, I have focused most of my efforts on cycling.
I am originally from Virginia Beach and have spent my entire life living in Virginia.
Now, for the hard part
Posted by Matt in microfracture on September 19, 2008
With injuries in the past, and with this one, the actual ‘getting hurt’ part is extremely frustrating but there isn’t really anything I can do about it. Once whatever it is that is bothering me crosses a threshold, there’s no going back and no decrease in training or extra stretching or icing will allow me to keep running. Usually that threshold comes really fast after the onset and by the time I realize anything is going on, it’s too late. That was especially the case with my knee. One step I was fine and the next, pow! I did have a lot of soreness in my leg just beneath it for quite awhile leading up to the meltdown, but no way I would have predicted that it would erupt into torn cartilage one morning.
The actual rest period kind of goes the same way — it’s frustrating, but again, it’s out of my control. The damage has been done so I just have to sit tight and wait for whatever it is to heal. In previous cases, however, I just couldn’t run, but I could do just about anything else. This time, I can’t even walk. But, that’s coming to an end.
It’s not until I start to come back that things really get tough. Then, things start to come back under control. The choices I make and the things I do start to have an effect on how quickly I can return to normal. Try to do stuff too fast and the injury will come back and I’ll be out for even longer, perhaps permanently in this case. Don’t do anything at all or not enough and recovery becomes agonizing and difficult. There is some optimal level of increasing activity, but it’s hard to figure out what that is. Even when I was on the team and with the help of my coach and the trainers, nothing ever worked out perfectly and I found myself suffering a lot of setbacks when trying to come back from an injury.
It isn’t just the difficulty of figuring out what and how much to do when that makes recovery hard, but the entire transition itself that can be a real pain. The amount of time and effort required is just so much more than during the most difficult weeks of normal training when I was running track and cross country. Going out for a run or workout every day is pretty easy because it’s pretty much the same kind of thing every day and I’ve done it a zillion times before so I know exactly what to do. Even alternative exercise isn’t all that bad since I get into a routine with biking or whatever it is that I’m doing instead of running. Unfortunately, in this case, I really can’t do much of anything. However, when I start to come back, there is this transitional phase where I’m forced to do things differently almost every day — all kinds of weird strengthening stuff and the gradual addition of more activity (which isn’t always running). It takes a lot more time and effort than I’m used to, but in most cases it’s the only way I’ll ever get back to normal.
It’s now time to start coming back. Yesterday, I went to the doctor and now I can start walking again, slowly. Within two weeks or so, I am supposed to try to get off the crutches completely. I’ve slowly moved around the apartment with one crutch and it’s hard. My left leg just isn’t used to it, but it doesn’t really hurt. I’m also supposed to take off the brace and gradually try to increase my range of motion in the leg. I’ve also got to set up PT appointments which will probably also help with my return to walking normally as well as range of motion. That will involve all the weird exercises and will probably be at some strange time of day so that I feel like I have a lot less time than I used to. I’m sure eventually they’ll help me figure out when I can start biking again and hopefully even run.
At this point, I can see I still have a very long way to go. The past four and a half weeks has seemed like forever, though each day individually seems to go by pretty quickly. The weather suddenly changed and it’s no longer the typical jungle summer weather but cooler and like fall. I know that it probably won’t even be until the end of the year or even into next year when I’ll be able to run again. The long, drawn-out recovery process is what makes things especially hard. My teammate who went through this same process was back to full strength in over six months after the surgery, but it’s different for everyone, and I don’t even know if I’ll be able to make it back. If the microfracture didn’t work, I’ll be back to feeling that awful grinding pain again when I run. I have to hope for the best, and at the least, I’ll be better off than I am now.
One week down, many to go
Posted by Matt in general, microfracture on August 25, 2008
I’ve now been stuck in this brace and on crutches for over a week. So far it hasn’t been too bad, but it’s real difficult to do a lot of things that I took for granted before. I’m not sure how I’ll be able to get along at school by myself — I can’t carry anything but a backpack and it’s a real chore to shower and to get food by myself. I’m hoping that I’ll become more adjusted to this and be faster — it takes me an hour to get ready in the morning compared to about 15 minutes before. I’ll see how things go on my own on Thursday and into Friday when I have to go back to have the stitches removed. Driving is going to be interesting and hopefully I’ll be able to get my leg in the car with the minimal amount of movement the brace allows.
I started a weight routine for my legs and upper body which is the best I can do since I can’t run or bike. It should help some when I eventually am allowed more range of motion in the brace. The brace has done wonders for my hamstring flexibility though. I have been putting some weight on the left leg since the doctor and PA said I am allowed to, but I stick to the crutches when I move around. I’m real paranoid about screwing up the healing process and knocking out that clot in the knee that’s supposed to form new cartilage. There’s still a few times each day where I’ll move and I can feel the knee pop right in the area where I had the microfracture. I really hope that’s not the kneecap destroying part of the clot that’s in there. I’ll have to ask about that on Thursday.
There really isn’t much else I can do except work on the school project during the day and watch the Olympics at night. The stuff I’m working on still has problems and the conference submission deadline is at the end of the week. Each test case in the experiment takes about 5 hours of CPU time so each time I change something it takes quite awhile until I see results. And there are a lot of test cases, so I need as many as 20 or 30 processors running simultaneously to get results as fast as possible. I used to wonder why there was a need for systems with so many processors, but now I know. Each group of tests also spits out about a gig in raw data which also illustrates the need for a large amount of storage space.
I really hadn’t watched that much of the Olympics before whenever they had it, but I don’t really have that much else to do this time around. I always watched some of the track stuff, but that was about it. Personally, I didn’t think the coverage was all that great since there seemed to be an insane amount of commercials. Also, since there were so many sports, they couldn’t show everything, so the time was broken into small chunks of each. I didn’t get to see some of the stuff that sounded interesting, like the sailing or whitewater rafting stuff, shooting, or the modern pentathlon (which has cross country). There were a lot of things that I didn’t find as interesting, like diving and gymnastics, which seemed to last forever and require a palate akin to a professional wine taster in order to distinguish between a good and bad performance.
With the entire world watching, you would think that all the athletes would be on their best behavior as a representative of their country and as the best in their sport. Despite this, there seemed to be a bit of showboating and poor sportsmanship. One guy in taekwondo kicked a referee in the face after being disqualified. A wrestler threw his medal down on the mat after being angry over a judge’s call. In the qualifying heats of the 4 x 400, Great Britain’s anchor taunted the Jamaican runner behind him as they finished. And of course, there was all the showing off for the camera by Jamaica’s Bolt in the 100 and 200 — this was so bad there is even a YouTube video mocking it. There were many cases in the qualifying heats of the sprints where those in the front would pretty much slow down and walk across the finish line. Before the championship season every year in track, our head coach always said if we did that we’d never be wearing a uniform again. Of course, these instances were probably the exceptions rather than the rule, but it only takes a few bad apples.
Now that the Olympics are over it’s now on to the hype of the conventions and the fall election. I’m getting sick of a lot of it especially since Virginia is considered a “swing” state. There are tons of ads on TV, most of which are really annoying. There are too many attacks on the other guy and not enough emphasis on the good qualities of either candidate.
Maybe by the time all that is over I’ll be back on my feet again and things will be more or less back to normal. Maybe I’ll be crippled for life, but I’m trying to do everything I can to avoid that.
On the flip side
Posted by Matt in general, microfracture on August 19, 2008
I am now one day closer to running again without pain. After a month of having the surgery looming, I finally had it and no longer have to worry about it.
Honestly, it was an interesting experience, excluding the fact that I can’t do anything for quite awhile and am in a bit of pain. There weren’t many people in the hospital while I was there, but I still had to do a lot of waiting. The building was really nice as was the room that they put me in. In the new hospital in Williamsburg, all the rooms are private, which I guess is unheard of.
After I checked in, I sat in a waiting room with my parents and then we were called in to a private room, in which I changed into a gown and waited some more. It was about two hours before anything really happened. Sometime after 9, a nurse came in and followed up on a bunch of medical history questions that I had been asked on Friday. She hooked me up to an IV of electrolytes and then I just watched more TV for nearly an hour. The anesthesiologist came in and talked to me for a minute or so, confirming that they were doing microfracture on my left knee and then quickly explained how the anesthetic would be applied. The surgeon came in right after that and again quickly talked to my parents and me about the knee operation. He also took a marker and wrote “Yes” on my left knee. Then it was time.
All the waiting was really making me nervous, so it seemed even worse when a few more hospital staff came into the room with the anesthesiologist to wheel me into the operating room. I realized that I had already taken my last steps, for they wouldn’t let me walk in there on my own. Just as they pushed me out into the hall, the anesthesiologist took a needle of something and shoved it into the IV tube. The staff, along with the anesthesiologist, wheeled me down a long maze of halls until we got into the operating room. They asked me if I was feeling drowsy, but I thought I felt fine. In the operating room, they wheeled the stretcher I was on next to the operating room table and asked me to crawl onto the table. In doing this I realized was feeling a bit tired.
I really don’t remember much about the operating room except that it was big and it was really bright. A few of the staff started talking to me, but I can’t remember what we were saying. I think it was about school. Then, they put a mask on me and we kept conversing, but again, I can’t remember what was said. I don’t remember feeling very tired or anything either.
The next thing I knew was that I was in the recovery room. There was a clock on the wall and it was about 11:30. I knew I left about 10 for the operating room, so I was surprised that it took as long as it did. Though there were at least five or six other beds in the room, there was nobody else in there except for a nurse. The nurse noticed I was awake and told me to close my eyes and go back to sleep. I didn’t want to. I remember saying a few things to her, but I can’t exactly remember what. I remember looking at the computer next to me which had an EKG readout and the nurse said something about my pulse being really low and that it kept setting off an alarm. I could hear it beeping. At some point the surgeon came by and said something about removing a one inch piece from my knee. I felt like I was in the recovery room for about five minutes before being wheeled back into the small room where my parents were, but when I got there and looked at the clock, it was 12:15. That made no sense to me, so I must have passed out again at some point.
The whole anesthetic experience was really weird since I’ve never had gaps in my memory like that. I’ve never lost track of time nor do I usually forget the topic of conversations that I’ve had in the recent past. It was like someone had hit the fast forward button on my memory.
Oddly, I didn’t have any pain when I finally became completely coherent. A new nurse came into the room and told my parents and I everything was done and that the operation went well. The nurse, like the one in the recovery room, also said that my pulse was really low and that it kept setting off the alarm on the EKG. Looking at it, my pulse was in the 40 bpm range, but occasionally went over 50 and turned the alarm off. Then it would go down again and the alarm would start screaming, so she just turned the thing off.
Looking down, I noticed I was in a huge leg brace that covered my entire leg, from ankle to upper thigh. The nurse went over some quick instructions about what to do in the next few days, which included some foot exercises to prevent blood clots. She gave me a sheet with the orthopedist’s appointment number for a follow up appointment that I am supposed to make. I’ve got to go back up to Williamsburg on Thursday for the follow-up and hopefully they will remove the bandages so that I can shower.
After that, I put on some clothes, got into a wheelchair and was taken out to the front where my dad pulled the car around.
I didn’t get to talk to the orthopedist again before leaving, but he had a good conversation with my parents about what went on in the surgery and about what to expect in the short term. He gave them a bunch of pictures from inside my knee. He took out a 1-inch piece of cartilage that had been floating around in there. One of the pictures had it next to a ruler and it looked to be about 2.5cm x 1cm. That was a lot bigger than I expected and I’ve heard that microfracture has lower success rates for larger areas. There were some pictures of the microfracture area, which greatly contrasted from the smooth areas of undamaged cartilage. The tear was really jagged and rough. After looking at the pictures, I’m surprised I was not in more pain over the past several months.
The orthopedist told my parents that I should be able to move my leg to about 30 degrees without any rubbing of the microfracture area against the kneecap. When I go to the next appointment, in addition to removing the bandages, set the brace at more of an angle so I can move around better and hopefully drive. I’m not sure about any kind of range of motion stuff, like spinning on an exercise bike. It seems that others that have had this surgery are able to do range of motion exercises fairly soon (and that it’s important to do so), but it seems different for me, maybe because of the location and size of the injury. I guess each doctor has a different approach. My parents said the orthopedist seemed very optimistic about my recovery and that the tear really wasn’t that bad. It’s kind of hard for me to form an opinion about that until I really start the recovery process.
Yesterday after I got back I just sat in front of the TV and watched the olympics. I convinced my parents to let me eat in the kitchen instead of just sitting on the couch. Getting up to go to the bathroom became a major chore, but I’ve moved around on the crutches a bit more now and it is starting to get easier. I had no pain whatsoever until about 8 last night and then whatever local anesthetic they gave me wore off like flipping a switch. Then it really started to hurt, a lot like it hurt when I last ran, except over a larger area. Taking the prescription painkillers only helped a little and they also made me dizzy.
It was also hard to sleep, which was a combination of the pain and the brace, which kept me from moving around much. At some point in the middle of the night, the pain subsided a fair amount and it’s been a lot better ever since.
It’s hard to just sit here while everyone else is out and about. My sister has been in and out several times since I’ve been here and my mom went out running. At this point it’s difficult just getting a bowl of cereal. I’m glad I came home because I would be in trouble if I were at school by myself. I’m hoping that it will get easier within the next week or so in order for me to go back to school and go to the office. I really hope that I’ll be allowed to do some kind of range of motion type stuff soon to help ease my conscience. The longer I can’t move my knee the more paranoid I’m going to be about it when I finally get the chance to do so. Of course, all the while I’m going to get extremely out of shape which will make any kind of recovery all the more challenging. But, now that the surgery is behind me it’s a lot easier to focus on the things I need to do to get better.
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