Hi Friends,
I am almost at the end of week 2 on my ACL reconstruction journey. Hopefully I’m not grossing you out too much with all this but I wanted to share with you something I just find fascinating!
Yesterday, I had my stitches removed and I was able to have a really good look at the technique my Surgeon used to close the incision made for the patella tendon graft.
This is mostly the view I’ve had these past two weeks. Leaning over a bit I can gather this view of the larger incision.
The incision is all covered up by tape, however, you can see the blue nylon thread used. There is just one piece of this nylon thread, a 3-4 inch tale at each end of the incision. I was really surprised to see this since everything I’d read and heard or seen here on the internet prepared me to have a whole bunch of staples or a row of multiple looped stitches.
Kasha, my Nurse explained that Dr. Kim uses a running stitch. Well! We all can appreciate that can’t we? He carefully brings the skin together and weaves his stitches back and forth and the result, once healed, is hardly a scar at all.
Can you believe that!?! To me this is so amazing. There are absolutely NO suture marks on either side of the skin. How he removed the long blue nylon thread was to just PULL it out! I’m not going to lie and tell you it didn’t hurt but it wasn’t bad at all. Sorta felt like a quick burn and then it was over.
Now I can shower, shave and start to get this leg moving and stretching. I feel so relieved!
But I’ll have to fill you in later about therapy. I met my match yesterday. I made the mistake of telling the therapist that the Doctor wanted me to work on bending. I knew I’d be in trouble when he said it was going to be unfortunate I hadn’t taken any pain meds!!!!
More later…
~Cathy
Sewing.for.Life! 
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