Hospital appointment

Life is messy, right now it feels messier than it normally is. Tuesday the 17th of Nov (yesterday), I had an appointment at Aleris Hamlet in Søborg. It’s a private hospital located in Copenhagen, Denmark.

The orthopedic surgeon I had an appointment with, had to examine my knee that I dislocated a little over a month ago. Denmark got this 30 day rule, to make sure the patients are seen to and helped in the health system before the 30th day. If that cannot be done, you are as a danish citizen in your right to go to a private hospital, on the country’s dime so to say. I really like that we get this sort of treatment, it’s important to have that kind of safety net to rely on. I’m very fortunate and I know that.

The appointment went as I had feared really, I got told that my kneecap is very loose, it’s so loose that I can dislocate it up to a 40 degree angle, which means that I need surgery. I honestly knew that I would need surgery deep down, but it still got to me and it still messed up all my plans for the future, which we will have to postpone until I have had my surgery and have recovered.

I don’t know which type of knee surgery I need yet, there’s a few to choose from, and they need me to get an MRI-scan / Magnetic Resonance Imaging, I got warned that there’s a waiting list, the max amount of time is two weeks though, so I’ll manage I hope..

The orthopedic surgeon told me, that it was highly possible that I would need a bone realignment – also called a Fulkerson Procedure. I’ve read up on the procedure and there’s several different types. But this procedure is by far the most complicated and the one with the longest rehabilitation period, which really scares me shitless to be honest. It’s a messy procedure and the bone needs a long time to heal. The knee can get very stiff and the tendons surrounding the knee could also tighten due to no movement in a long period of time, which will requires a lot of physiotherapy.

I know if I won’t get it fixed, it will lead to early onset arthritis, due to being dislocated again and again. It’s my second time to dislocate my kneecap, because it’s the second time, I need an operation to stabilize my kneecap in the future, but the MRI-scan will show which type I will need.

Walking out of the surgeons office, I felt like crying. I’m anxious to be honest, knees are so fragile and I don’t want to even think about the complications such a surgery have, if something were to go badly.

I’m in a lot of pain right now, I’m currently lying in bed, trying to get some rest, but I can’t seem to. At the hospital, the surgeon needed to move my kneecap whilst I had it bent, so he could determine how loose it was and in which angle it could possibly dislocate and that hurt… It still hurts. I know It’s stupid to get so worked up about an operation, but in all honesty, I’ve never had an operation before and I hate that I need one now. Especially on my knee, I can hardly stand my fiancé even trying to touch my knees due to having my right kneecap dislocate twice.. So the thought of an operation isn’t fun, to put it mildly.

The pain from dislocating the kneecap alone is.. Indescribable! The first time it happened, I ended up going into myself, in a type of shock. The only thing I really remember is being in so much pain that my lips felt numb. After that you start feeling fragile in a whole new type of way! It’s crazy..

So the news I got yesterday weren’t nice, it was what I had expected, but it still made me upset. I hope that I won’t need to wait for several months for the surgery, that would really mess me up, the anguish of waiting a long time.. But I’ll take it one day at a time, now I need the MRI and then the orthopedic surgeon will decide which type of surgery is needed.

I hope you guys are staying safe during this COVID19 pandemic and are healthy and keeping your spirits up. It gets stressful during times like these, one bad thing rarely happens without several other bad things following suit.. It’s said it always comes in threes, but I have personally long surpassed three, I’m on my second hand, and I’m still counting.. The year isn’t over yet! Yep, 2020 haven’t been the amazing year that I had hoped for, there’s been so much pain, loss and worry, but behind every cloud, there’s the sun. Hopefully we all get to feel some sunshine and happiness soon.

I’ll see you online, take care x

The last few months..

So I’ve been up to a lot of stuff these past few months, most of them quite bad experiences.

I ended up dislocating my kneecap early in the morning 20.10.19 whilst in the bathroom and the feeling of it all was so intense, having to yell my better half’s name across the apartment to get help, and him running to me, that was scary. I then told him to go get my phone so I could call emergency services and then I relocated my kneecap myself while he wasn’t in view, and I remember thinking that he shouldn’t see this and that I wanted to spare him for it… I’m kinda happy that I could do that myself, so I didn’t need the hospital staff to do it, but I cannot describe the actual pain of dislocating a kneecap, it’s insane.

The first picture is a few hours after the dislocation and relocation of my kneecap.

My right knee a few hours after the dislocation.

As if that weren’t enough, my mum was rushed to the ER due to her eyes, she had pressure build up, due to dialated pupils, she had been to see an eye doctor who had given her some eye drops to examine her eyes and she had a very bad reaction.

The pressure in both her eyes was at max buildup at 77, that is insanely dangerous and not healthy at all for your eyes or your brain for that matter, due to the pressure buildup being located behind the eye sockets and therefore also close to the brain.

Circles = circulation cut off

The last few months has been pure hell, I haven’t been able to walk much due to my insanely swollen knee – no bruising though! I had to go on sick pay and postpone my internship too, which sucks so much!

I am doing physiotherapy exorcises every day at home, and I’m also attending this group workout session every Monday morning from 8 – 9, so I can get my leg back to normal.

To be honest, I had my leg in a Don Joy brace for almost a full month, with a 30 degree bend as my only movement, so I lost a lot of muscle in my leg and also my tendons have shortened, first I couldn’t bend my leg at all, but now it’s mainly straightening my leg that’s impossible, hence why I can’t walk properly, it just sucks.. I’m dead scared of dislocating it again, the pain was so unreal and intense.. But there is like a 30% possibility of this happening again, so I need to always keep working on my legs and gain muscle to support my kneecap, so it won’t happen again.

My Don Joy brace

I was on some heavy painkillers, Tramadol 100mg x3 a day, that dose I honestly didn’t even take! I took half, which is 50mg, but only once or twice a day, just to endure the pain the first week or so. But those pills are horribly addictive, so I refused to take them for long and I skipped those pretty fast. I only take regular painkillers if needed now, I have seen too many people addicted to Tramadol.

My heavy painkillers that I skipped pretty fast.

My mom underwent eye surgery and got her eye lenses removed and replaced on both her eyes due to cataract. The whole procedure was done on a single week with multiple hospital visits, a lot of medicine to keep any pressure buildup down and two surgeries, which I attended -even though I was limping around like an idiot and people thought I was the one needing some sort of surgery… My mum is thankfully doing much better now, and is happy, healthy and pain free -and with no side effects of the pressure buildup in her eyes. Her eye lenses were stiff due to the cataract and that left her with a very small “frame” in her eyes, which then blocked the drainage in both her eyes completely when she got the eye drops at her eye doctors, so he could check her eyes, which is normally a routine thing.

The whole thing could have ruined her vision and created chronic glaucoma, which would have impaired her vision a lot.. But she got a clean bill of health and could all finally relax!

Glaucoma explained.

I am currently lying in bed, just took a 600mg painkiller to dull the ache in both my knees – one due to kneecap dislocation (patellaluxation) the other due to strain, cause of my inability to walk properly, therefore I lean a lot on my left knee.

I got the Don Joy off after almost a month, I donated it to Africa…. I’m happy to be rid of that thing, and now I have a kneecap support band that is supposed to lock the kneecap in place, until you gain enough muscle to not dislocate the kneecap once more. The situation is honestly horrible, I’m usually the nurse, not the patient! I hate being the vulnerable one, I’m a good nurse but a horrible patient.

Kneecap stabilization band.

Last week (Thursday – 28.11.19) I had what’s called electro therapy, that really sucked… It was supposed to awaken my big muscle in my upper thigh, so it could help me straighten my leg out again. For almost ten whole minutes I had a jolt of electricity every 10 seconds going through my thigh, but no much response at all, only a tiny little visible reaction, I’m supposed to have more electro therapy today, so wish me and my leg luck, I need to see results now!

A borrowed picture of undergoing electro therapy.

I’ll see if I can get some proper pictures of the electro therapy today, maybe even do a whole “how to” on physio for weak knees, it might just help someone else out, which is somehow a bit comforting to know.

I’m going to try and relax a bit now before getting ready for today’s session of pain haha, I’m almost used to the torture by now, but somehow it’s also comforting, I know it needs to hurt to get better, especially when it’s muscles and short tendons! I’m glad that my education have at least prepared me a little for this entire disaster, both my mum and her surgery and also my setback with my knee. I have learned a lot recently, but it’s from another point of view -The patient and the family of the patient.

We are very much at the mercy of our medical staff, one wrong step can make a snowball effect, very much like my mother’s current medical history. It is also human for the medical staff to once in a blue moon make the wrong decisions, and it’s all about your own personal coping mechanisms and about the backup from family and friends that sees you through everything. I for one, found out how cool my brain is during the incidents, and then the all crippling shock of it all that comes afterwards. But we have endured, we have prevailed my family and I.

I hope that year 2020 is going to be a much better year for us, we have had a lot of bad luck this year, not just these two incidents, but in our entire family as well. But we cope and we will get stronger from going through this.

I’m proud of myself for doing what I did during my kneecap dislocation, for stepping up and relocating it myself, for thinking “Damn I don’t want my better half to see my knee like this, this is bad!” -I have no clue as to how I did what I did, but I managed, I have a new sense of respect for myself!