i'm baa-aaack

i'm back home, resting, and in good shape. no nausea at all, praise the Lord. that's now three successful surgeries with no puking my guts out. 3 for 6, not bad.

-menlo park surgical hospital is seriously like a hotel. it's the smallest hospital i've ever seen - each patient gets their own room with their own bathroom & tv & dresser cabinet & more. and the room looks like a hotel room. i didn't see another patient there the entire time, it's that private for the patients. craziness.

-i've never actually walked into the operating room before. i was a little confused, the nurse came by and was like, ok follow me. i was like ummm... where are we going? so i follow him, and i walk right into the operating room and climbed right onto the operating table. that was quite unusual since usually you're rolled into the operating room. then again, the operating room was like 20 feet from my room.

-before the surgery, my doctor came in and went over all the details with me. basically told me he's not sure if this surgery will fix all my problems - today he was going to attack the scar tissue problem, but again, he had concern about lack of cartilege and his biggest concern was possible misplacement of my ACL, which would require a complete do-over of my first surgery.

-waking up from being under is always unpleasant for me. i hate being half conscious, or wanting to be fully awake, but phsyically unable to actually get myself awake. and i always get horrible chills from the anesthesia. karen + anesthesia just don't mix well.

-my doctor wanted to talk to me again, so i had to wait until he was done with his next patient. finally he came in, with very good news. he found a huge block of scar tissue that he analogized to a chunk of cement in a location that almost all doctors are not aware to clean out. he thinks that was causing all my pain & problems - and my cartilege looks good and the ACL placement looks okay. hooray! he came out with a much more optimistic view that this surgery will be successful than he went into the surgery with. sorry, no videos this time, just more pics.

-now i'm back at home with this ice machine, that to everyone's surprise at the hospital, out of four total previous surgeries on both my knees, i've never had one before. i'm supposed to run it for three days straight, but i can't really see myself lugging this ice thing to work with me, so we'll see.

many many thanks to everyone who came tonight, who are coming tomorrow, and keeping me company through season 6 premier of 24 on sunday, praying for me, calling me, bringing me food, etc! makes sitting on the couch not as lonesome.