Postoperative consultation

Posted in health by

I saw my surgeon this week, Tuesday the 9th of March. I was honestly really nervous and I was sure that my bone that I got chiseled off my shin and reattached, hadn’t fused like it should have. Everything looked fine on the X-rays that I had – although you can’t see my Mpfl reconstruction (two anchors and a screw), which is very strange! But you can see my TTO surgery and the bone has fused, thankfully! Below you can see the two X-ray images.

My surgeon told me that the swelling I’m experiencing is unfortunately very normal, it will take a while to go back to normal, which sucks.. The pain in my knee isn’t normal though, it’s mainly in my arthroscopy incision that I’m experiencing a stabbing / burning sensation and he said to give it time, that I’m still healing and it could be the healing that’s making it so painful, or scar tissue. It can also be nerve damage, he wouldn’t rule that out, but only time will tell.

I won’t need my knee drained from fluids, I was really worried about that, because it was / is extremely swollen! (Picture below shows just how swollen!) No matter how much I elevate, ice and rest it my right knee / leg is just crazy swollen, it’s frustrating and painful. The swelling prevents me from bending my knee correctly and also walking normally. I don’t walk, I limp, and it’s honestly starting to really hurt my hip.

My surgeon told me that it’s important to tape my scars up, that way my skin won’t pull my incisions and they won’t get wider, but stay thin and small. So I’m taping them up like crazy, hoping it will make a difference!

I’ve been in a lot of pain this past week. My surgeon prodded my leg and knee to death and it’s just really sore right now, even more than usual, – which is a lot. I’ve been resting a lot, trying not to walk much and honestly it’s been really boring and mind numbing. My surgeon told me not to take any ibuprofen, because it slows down the healing process, so I’m only on paracetamol – which really doesn’t take any of the pain. But hopefully it’ll get better, most important thing is, that my tibia is fully fused and repaired. I’ll be gentle with my leg this following week and hope for the best.

Stay safe out there guys, and thank you for following my journey! 🤍

Pain and insomnia

Posted in Exercise, health, Insomnia by

Lying awake at 2 o’clock at night has it’s ups and downs.. My knee and leg is really getting to me lately. Even my “good knee” is starting to hurt, because I compensate so much. It’s a vicious circle.

Then I end up not sleeping at night, because I’m in pain and that makes me worn, agitated and stressed. I try to work out and stick to my physiotherapy program, but my energy level is so low right now.

I get tired and completely worn out from just spending time with my friend Jane. But then when it’s time to go to sleep, my body won’t let me rest. I’m not the only one going through this issue, I know that. Half the time I don’t pay my insomnia much attention, but when dealing with my knee recovery and trying to make sure I do all of my physiotherapy, it gets to me. I’m only human, I get stressed and anxious, tired and fed up.. This too shall pass.

Most of my insomnia is due to knee pain, speculating what my surgeon will say the 9th of March at the consultation and my brain not being able to shut up and power off.

Some nights I don’t mind the lack of sleep, others are harder. When I start analyzing my aches and pains – that’s the worst nights. I can scare myself into a complete panic attack. But it’s gotten better.

I think to myself: Breathe, lie down flat on your back and just breathe. Feel your body slowly relax. Close your eyes and empty your mind of all thoughts. Wash away the negativity by every exhale, repel it and inhale positive. Feel your body slowly relax. Breathe.

Some nights it works, others I’m having to listen to podcasts, watch movies or read books till I just pass out from exhaustion.

Tonight I’m having a good night despite the insomnia. No stressful thoughts or fear of a serious diagnosis due to my pain and inability to bend my leg properly. Tonight I can put these thoughts into words and get all of my messy feelings out of my system.

I’m lucky, I know that. I have a good life, an amazing fiancé, my dog, family, friends and our beautiful home. I’m amazed how much my surgery has drained me though. This surgery isn’t just tough physically, it’s also tough mentally due to the slow recovery. This is rarely mentioned till after surgery though. It sucks, but it will get better, I will get back to normal.

I’m trying to take this whole “recovery journey” one step at a time, not stressing, but it’s freaking hard.. I already pressured my leg so much that it swelled up like a pumpkin once.. So I just try to take these small steps towards my recovery, listening to my physiotherapist, but it’s horribly slow to be honest, too slow for my liking.

I hope everyone reading along, is doing good, keeping safe during this pandemic and has a healthier sleeping pattern than me! Have a great Monday guys, take care and see you online. x

Home & health update

Posted in health, home, Interior design, My place by

A little sneak peek into our home, I love how it’s turned out, the homemade wooden shelves, our furniture and the constant beautiful natural light that’s always streaming into our dining room and living room. We’ve tried to keep everything a bit rustic with a countryside feel to it and still be true to our own style.

It’s been rough at my last physiotherapy session, my knee hurts like hell and there’s something inside of it that just feels wrong somehow. Like every time I try to bend it, something inside of my knee pinches and I feel this intense stabbing pain. This also happens when I try to stretch my leg out after having tried to bend it.. It kinda feels like something is pinched / stuck inside of my knee, it’s a really strange and scary feeling.

I can’t sleep on my right side at all, my whole right side of my shin is so uncomfortable to sleep on and also my shin is numb, so it’s impossible to sleep on my right side. I feel no nerve improvement at all, I am scared that I won’t regain any feeling back, especially since I haven’t experienced any improvement, not even a little. But if I never dislocate my kneecap ever again, it’ll still be worth it. I just hope that the pain goes, it’s quite hard to live with that stabbing and burning sensation, every time I take a step, try to bend or stretch my leg.

My other leg hurts as well, due to the constant weight I put on it to compensate for my bad leg. It’s an evil circle really and it’s draining both physically and mentally. Right now I’m lying in bed, trying to rest both my knees. One due to surgery and the other due to overcompensation, my good knee feels so sore and uncomfortable. I hope I’ll be able to sleep tonight, but it’s been many months since I had a good nights sleep. Since the accident at work to be honest. It’s complete torture to have a sleep pattern like this and to be woken up due to pain.

My scars look better, but the small one near my knee is atrophic. It itches, burns and it feels really tight. I apply Bio-Oil on all my scars, both morning and evening and massage the scar tissue. But this one scar still causes me a lot of grief. I hope it’ll start to soothe.. The one on the inside of my knee is very discolored still, I hope it will disappear though, but at least it’s not as bad as the one near my knee.

I have an appointment with my surgeon the 9th of March, I hope he can help me figure out what the pain in my knee could be and what to do with this scar. I really hoped it would have been almost invisible, the way I was stitched actually gave me every possibility for the scar to be tiny.

It wasn’t a big or wide scar, so I hope that it’ll heal and look nice and invisible at some point. But I don’t know much about scarring or their healing process. I’ll have to speak to my surgeon and see if there’s still hope for the scar to get thinner and less bumpy. I’m crossing my fingers and hope I won’t need another surgery to remove the atrophic scar.

This shows how small the scar actually was.

The weather has been beautiful these past few days. The sunshine has been a very welcome friend, that I have enjoyed as much as possible. I long for summertime and warm weather, flowers and to be able to pick cherries on our tree in the garden.

What do you miss the most right now? Life pre COVID19? Summer? Traveling? All valid things to miss. Honestly most of all I miss being able to sleep at night, not worrying about my knee and to be able to run and to kneel.. Pretty simple things to be honest, but important.

Hope you’ll have a wonderful weekend and that good things are coming your way! See you online. x

Post surgery update

Posted in Exercise, My month, The future, The past by

Sorry for being M.I.A for so long! I’ve been very busy to put it mildly and I haven’t had any interest in writing at all, it’s been a complete roller coaster of ups and downs to be honest.

I had my surgery which was: Tibial Tubercle Osteotomy, an mpfl reconstruction and a keyhole surgery, where they removed some mucus glands. My Tibial Tubercle Osteotomy (TTO), was the biggest procedure. I had to have my shin opened up and a part of the top of my tibia had to be cut and placed lower on my tibia due to my kneecap not catching the groove in my knee, this is called “patella Alta” and means that your kneecap sorta hovers above your groove in your knee and never really tracks properly. The mpfl reconstruction aka medial patellofemoral ligament reconstruction, is where you get a new ligament that holds your kneecap in place, the ligament often gets damaged every time you dislocate your kneecap and this was done by two incisions on the inside of my knee, placing an artificial ligament on my kneecap / patella with screws, and tracing it down to my femur, where you attach is there too also using screws.

Below is a more visual explanation of what’s been done to my knee / leg, one of the pictures is a bit graphic, but I promise that there is no blood. It’s basically just showing stitches and sterile strips.

A more clear view of what’s been done ☺️

It was scary, I have to admit that. I tried to keep my head clear though and managed to go through with the entire surgery without any major issues. The part where they had to put me under full anesthesia was the worst, I hate giving up any type of control, so I was fighting the drugs, but ended up being out anyways – luckily! 😅 When I woke up, I spoke English.. The doctors were a little surprised, but as soon as I found out that the poor male nurse next to me wasn’t my fiancé and that he was speaking Danish to me, I switched to danish! (My fiancé is from England and moved to Denmark to live with me)

I woke up completely confused and it felt like no time at all had passed. Although two hours went by, just like that! My surgeon was brilliant and the procedures went smooth. I was in such a hurry to get out of the hospital and home that I was a bit annoyed that I had to have a nasal cannula on.. I kept moving it cause it was annoying me and I had no idea why they were actually using it! (When my brain cells finally started to function, I figured that my oxygen levels must have been low and that’s why I needed it on). After I was cleared on my oxygen intake, they gave me some food and something to drink, I swallowed the hospital food that they gave me and without even being asked, I started to try and get dressed – much to the amusement of the patient lying next to me, due to me huffing and puffing and trying to get my legs to work. 🙈 I was in the car, on my way back home in like less than half an hour of waking up. I just wanted to go home. 😅

Day three was by far the worst… I was in utter agony, my leg was throbbing and I felt like I had to throw up. The drugs that the hospital had given me must have worn off completely by then and I was really feeling the pain that day. But after day three, things slowly got better and better – after week two I stopped with the heavy Oxycodones and was only taking regular Paracetamol and ibuprofen. I’m quite happy with that decision.

Below I’m posting some pictures of my recovery, from day one, to the current state of my leg. So a warning in advance, that the pictures might be a tad graphic.

  • Day of the surgery
  • New Year’s Eve – day 1
  • Day 3, bandage change
  • Day 6 – lower mpfl incision
  • Day 6 – TTO incision
  • Day 9 – slowly healing
  • Day 11, I removed my stitches
  • Day 12 – no more stitches
  • Day 16
  • Day 20
  • Day 23
  • Day 26
  • Day 28 – ankle support
  • Day 30

As you see, I removed my own stitches. It was mainly because I wanted to avoid the pandemic, which was at its highest and I also knew how to remove them myself due to my education. My surgeon gave me the all clear to remove them after ten days, I gave it one more day, just to be sure and then I removed them. It went very well and I had no issues whatsoever.

I had to have an ankle support on, I am still using it when I walk, because my ankle and foot have been in a lot of pain whenever I put weight on my leg. Don’t worry, my physiotherapist had a look at it and nothing is broken, it’s probably just sprained or agitated due to the surgery. When wearing the ankle support and shoes with good arch support when I walk, I feel almost no pain.

My knee is still stiff and I’m still fighting to get it to bend more, on week two I was at 65 degrees, at week three I was at 95 degrees and now more than a month post op, I hope I’ve come a lot further! Time will only tell.. The 8th of feb, I’m going to a checkup with my physiotherapist, she will be able to measure the degrees that I bend, I really hope I’ve come further than the 95 degrees, I’ve been trying to work out as much as possible at home and I hope I can try to just do that for now and have regular checkups once a week or every two weeks to check my progress. That way I’ll avoid the pandemic as much as possible!

If you want to see more pictures and videos of my recovery, you can follow my journey on Instagram and see my progress from day one on my highlights, my name on Instagram is “Lifeasmiamariah”. ❤️

I hope you are staying safe, thank you so much for reading along! See you online x

Hospital appointment

Posted in Insomnia, Random talk, The future by

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

October in pictures

Posted in My month, My place, The future, The past by

We’ve been in constant DIY mode, to put it mildly.. 🥴 I started October off, dislocating my kneecap, that was insane and painful and totally unexpected! So I’m out of the DIY game for the moment, but D has been pushing forward, getting the living room ready for Christmas. The 17th of Nov, I’m going to an examination of my knee at a private hospital, the only reason I’m going to a private hospital, is due to the long wait list at the public hospitals and in Denmark we have a max 30 day wait to be examined. If it’s longer than 30 days, your entitled to go to a private hospital. I would have been waiting to be seen till next year, so I’m thankful for the 30 day max system! 😳

We’ve chosen to stain our windowsills white, they were mahogany and very dark.. Our style is Scandinavian, light and modern – which does not really go with mahogany at all. So they got sanded down, stained white and the result is amazing.

D ended up having to spray paint the radiators, they were yellow and just plain old looking, but the finished result is awesome and fits the living room much better! We chose a matte white for the radiators, normally they are glossy, but I’m really pleased that we chose the matte white, it looks great.

We ended up celebrating Halloween, since I’m home full time with my knee, I needed some cheering up and D managed to put up decorations – although I helped carve the pumpkins! Mine is the little one, D’s is a masterpiece as always lol, he is way too good at carving pumpkins, seriously! It’s not fair, I’ve only carved pumpkins for like three years, in Denmark Halloween is a newly adopted thing, so I’m not used to pumpkin carvings at all, but hey I made a fair attempt! 🥴

The sealing got a once over too! We painted it with “Trip Trap” paint where you can see the wood through the paint, which was just what we wanted! We have a theme I guess? 😂 Our floor is white stained too, windowsills and now the sealing.. Not bad, I adore it!

D carved out shelves for our square hole in the dining room, it looks amazing so far, and yes, you probably guessed that we are staining these shelves white too.. 😅 They are mahogany, and will fit in will with the windowsills.

COLOR you guys! We needed some color, so we had a curtain company stop by, take some measurements and we ended up loving this greyish green color, and we are getting this color everywhere in the living room. I think we really needed a color, and the grey-green will fit our furniture so well and also let in the natural light and create a cozy atmosphere in the living room and dining room.

At the very end of October, my roses started to blossom and also my fuchsia is in full flower! It’s beautiful, but also a little strange.. The weather has been extremely mild in Denmark, considering that it’s autumn. This is our first winter in the house, I can’t wait to experience it! It’s all so unreal, I still can’t believe all of this is ours, I’m so happy and I can’t wait to get to experience all of the years seasons here, in our house. ❤️

I hope everyone is staying safe, this year for Halloween we gave the kids gloves, so they could still have candy, and all the candy we had, was wrapped. England is closing down again, I’m worried about my bonus babies and their family, D’s family and the friends we have in England.

I hope everyone is staying safe, social distancing and no matter where you are from, whatever country, I hope you are safe and that your government is doing their best to keep you safe. I hope that 2021 will be a much better year, but I’m worried about the future and for our future generation. How will life be, with this pandemic, and how bad will it actually get, before it gets better? So many questions..

I’ll see you guys online x