The Whole Story

            The past few years have been quite difficult for me but they have also caused me to grow in ways I didn’t know was possible. If you would’ve told me in 2010 that over the next 5 years I would have to have 7 surgeries on my knee/leg (one of which will be in a little over a week on May 4th) I probably would’ve laughed at you and then promptly proceeded to have a panic attack. It’s crazy how God raises you up and prepares you to face the trials he puts in front of you. Not in a million years did I think I would have to go through a trial like this or that, one day, I’ll be that old lady riding the motorized cart around the grocery story, but apparently that’s a part of my Heavenly Fathers plan for me. (But don’t worry, I’ll make sure to bring my friends so we can have races up and down the aisles :P) I don’t think I’ve ever shared the whole story of what’s been going on with my knee/leg so what better time than to do it now! It may be long and boring to some, so don’t feel bad if you don’t read this whole post, but for those of you who are interested, I’ll start from the very beginning:

So, for Christmas 2009, “Santa” brought both my brother and I red motor scooters. They were so much fun to play on! A lot of the time my brother and I would go over to the high school that’s about a block away from where we live and we would ride the scooters down the hills there. It was so much fun to race each other down the hills, seeing how fast we could go!

On May 30, 2010 we were doing just that when my brother’s scooter started to die on him. Since we were only about a block from home, we figured it would be best if I just helped push him home. As we were heading out of the parking lot, there were 2 speed bumps we had to go over. On the first one I made my brother go over it while I stayed closer to the curb, but on the second one I decided to go over it so he could didn’t have to. When I went over, I only had one hand on the handlebars and my other hand on my brother’s back, pushing him. As I went over the speed bump, I lost control of my scooter and crashed, landing directly on my knee, banging it up pretty nicely.

I didn’t end up going to see a doctor about the injury for almost 4 months, but because I still hadn’t gained the feeling back in the front of my knee, I figured it was about time. On my very first appointment, the doctor told me that I had done damage to the nerve that runs across the front of the knee cap, but everything else appeared to be okay. At that point, other than numbness in the front of my knee, nothing in my knee had been causing issues/pain.

It wasn’t until almost a year later that I started to get pain in the back of my knee and issues with it catching and locking up. After having an MRI come back perfectly normal, but testing positive for a meniscus tear with other tests, I decided it would be best to go ahead and have my knee scoped to see what was going on. So, on March 22, 2012 I had knee surgery #1. During the scope, my orthopedic surgeon here in Twin Falls did a lateral release of my knee cap and found a tear in the articular cartilage on the lateral side of my tibia. After cleaning it up, he told me that my knee should go back to normal and that I shouldn’t have any more issues with it.

About 9 months after this I started to get the same pain again. While visiting with the orthopedic doctor, he told me there was a slight chance that the cartilage could be tearing again, but that, because of my young age, he didn’t think that was very likely. After doing physical therapy and still having the pain present, I decided to have my knee scoped once again. So, on March 21, 2013, one day shy of a year, I had knee surgery #2.

During the scope the surgeon was surprised to find more torn cartilage and decided to do a procedure called micro-fracturing (where they put several tiny holes in your bone where the damage is) in an attempt to keep more cartilage for tearing and to help more grow. After that surgery I was completely off my leg for 6 weeks and then started physical therapy right after to gain all the strength in my leg back.

Everything seemed to be healing great after that until I crashed going down a water slide for a regional FHE activity on August 12, 2013. I went and saw the ortho again after a month of the pain not going away. He suspected I had torn more cartilage in my knee and decided that I probably should have it scoped again to clean it out. So, on October 10, 2013, I had knee surgery #3. During this surgery he just cleaned out the torn cartilage and then had me start physical therapy a few weeks after to help with the healing process.

Unlike all the other post-ops I had had in the past, during this one the ortho told me I had the knee of an 80 year old and that I needed to be careful with it for the rest of my life. He explained to me that with this kind of damage they would normally just do a knee replacement but, because of my age, that wasn’t a very ethical option. I remember just sitting there listening to him and trying my best not to cry. It wasn’t easy being told you can never run, you should never go skiing, snowboarding, or sledding, that you should stay away from stairs as much as possible, and that about the only thing you can do is walk…carefully. Definitely not something an 18 year old wants to hear.

After doing physical therapy for about 8 weeks, the pain that I had had before surgery was still there. After discussing what would be the best thing to do next, the orthopedic surgeon here in Twin decided it would be best if I went and saw a knee specialist in Boise.

A few weeks later I saw the specialist in Boise and he explained to me that the next thing that would be best to do was a knee realignment. He told me that since I’m naturally slightly knocked kneed, all the pressure when I walked was going onto the damaged part of the cartilage, and that by realigning it, it should stop it from tearing over and over again.

So, on April 7, 2014, I had knee surgery #4 (the first one with an open incision). The surgery went just as planned; I was in the hospital for observation for 24 hours and was then released. I was in a full leg brace, completely off my leg for 8 weeks and was then allowed to slowly start putting more weight on it over the next month or so. I don’t think I ever knew the real meaning of pain until this surgery. I remember waking up in the middle of the night and laying there crying because the pain was so unbearable. I was on strong pain killers for close to a month and actually had withdrawals when I stopped taking them. There’s no other way to put it other than it sucked! And the rehab was just as hard! Teaching my muscles in my leg how to work a whole different way took a lot of blood, sweat, and tears.

About a month after this surgery I noticed that the incision wasn’t healing right. After another month of making several unplanned trips up to Boise, the surgeon came to the conclusion that I was having an allergic reaction to the internal sutures. So, of June 4^th, 2014, I had knee surgery #5 to clean out all the sutures and replace them with regular, deep running sutures that would have to be removed a few weeks later.

After that, the incision started healing correctly and everything seemed to be working really well. The pain I had had in the back and along the outer side of my knee cap went away completely and the only thing that caused some issues was the metal plate. After I was released by the ortho to start doing stairs, squats, lunges, etc. I started to notice the plate even more. Whenever I would go up stair you cause actually hear the muscles and tendons in my leg popping over the plate and it wasn’t the most comfortable. The sound was quite amusing to me, but seemed to gross out everyone around me haha.

So, on December 5, 2014, I had knee surgery #6 here in Twin to have the plate and screws removed. I was in a full leg brace for 6 weeks, but was able to walk on it. Everything was healing great until the middle of January. While helping my parents with a scouting activity I started to get a pretty good amount of pain in my knee. The day after the pain started I had an ultrasound done to check for blood clots and it came back completely normal. I had blood tests done, which also came back normal and the x-rays that were done showed that my bone was completely healed. Since the bone was healed, the doctor released me to start walking without the brace. After continuing to have pretty severe pain, I made an appointment to see the specialist in Boise again. I knew something wasn’t right when I would come home from class in tears and shaking from the amount of pain I was in.

When I saw the specialist in the middle of March, he did more x-rays and was quite surprised with what they showed. I had been walking, doing stairs, squats, lunges, etc. on a broken leg. May femur has a stress fracture running through where one of the screws use to be and it had started to gap on one side.

The bones been healing well, but it’s not healing straight, so it’s completely changed the alignment of my knee again. The alignment is off enough were its likely to cause me to have ankle or knee problems in the future, so the best thing to do is realign it before it heals completely. To realign it, this time they will be breaking my femur and put a wedge of bone in to straighten everything out.

            Knowing what a surgery like this involves is a blessing and a curse at the same time. It’s kind of nice knowing what it will be like and that I’ve done it before, so know I can do it again, but at the same time knowing what it’s like makes it even more terrifying. Having my knee realigned last year was probably one of the hardest things I have ever had to go through, both physically and mentally/emotionally. Some moments I feel prepared to do it all over again, but other times it’s so overwhelming, I have to fight back the tears, and half the time fighting them doesn’t work. I’m trying to keep a positive attitude about all this, and most of the time I am able to, but sometimes it just doesn’t work. I heard a quote earlier this week and it seemed to be just what I needed to hear. It doesn’t show who it’s by but it says, “Telling me I can’t be sad because someone else has it worse is the same as telling me I can’t be happy because someone else has it better.” With that being said, I am forever grateful I don’t have an injury or illness that’s life threatening! Things could be so much worse, but it doesn’t necessarily make this any easier. A trial is a trial, not matter how big or small it is.

            If you’ve made it this far into the post, I’m quite impressed! This turned out a bit longer than I thought it would, so I’ll go ahead and wrap thing up, but first I want to say thank you to all my family and friend who have helped me through all of this. I seriously couldn't have made it this far (without going crazy) without every single one of you, and I will definitely need all the prayers in my behalf, good luck, and encouragement I can get for this upcoming surgery! I couldn’t have asked for better people to go through this trial with! You know who you are :) Thank you from the bottom of my heart! <3

            Now, time for me to prepare for knee/leg surgery #7. I have to finish up this semester of school a few weeks early, so I have a feeling the next few days are going to get kind of crazy! Only 9 days away!