The Train's Lounge Car

chadwick said:

oh im very sincere, rgambs. it's my curious nature wanting to know these things. i found myself yesterday wanting to know which company manufactured my new knees. guess i'll make a note of this & ask the dr when i see him next. i remember you saying the operating rooms you were working in they had music turned up. this is a amazing visual to me

thank you, lux. im on my feet & zooming about like a turtle or some other slow ass critter

The Dr. I worked with did Depuy rreplacements almost exclusively. We used his IPhone for music...Ozzy was his favorite and lots of Alt stuff like REM and NIN. Plenty of volume, enough to aggravate anesthesia lol
After all the prep they slice right in, and the patella gets folded back with a tiny crowbar, and let me tell ya, it puts up a fight! If you let go all at once, the patella would flip down hard enough to fling the instrument across the room. What follows is a whole lot of bone sawing, hammering, chiseling, drilling, and nailing. It truly is alot like carpentry. Your leg gets bent and unbent with lots of force and a tight grip. The tibial plateau is kind of like a fist held with fingers away from you, and they saw it down flat below the ridges that correspond to the knuckes on your fist. Same with the femur. The bone bleeds purple and fat pours out, the room smells of burning plastic if your bone is very hard. Your femoral canal gets reamed out and hollowed like a flute, a very bloody messy process. The cement is a powder and liquid that get mixed, they heat up and set slowly and then BAM! pounded in. Of course this is the super simplified summary, but any specific questions (no medical advice lol) about the process I'd be glad to answer!

2 inch pins with pegged heads get pounded in to hold templates in place, which guide the saw cuts, and sometimes a little touch-up is done free-handed. Your patella is sawed flat and a big plastic button is cemented on in it's place. Anywhere there is cement the bone will probably be pocked with shallow holes for the cement to gain purchase. When the implants are hammered on, sometimes blood flies all the way to the ceiling!

Well then,I'm not going to bitch about any aches and pains today.Thx boys

let me tell you something, rgambs. when coming around after surgery im lying there in thorough agony. i literally felt/thought i had been hit by a car, took out at the legs, lying in a ditch unable to get up & walk. the nurse was telling me to calm down as i was moaning rolling back & forth. she was telling me i could rip the IV line out. she told my g/f i was misbehaving hence the delay on me getting to my room

it was so painful coming back around once anesthesia was wearing off. unreal how terrible that felt. just the worst ever. see i did not get the 4 nerve blocking shots. they tried but couldn't get it right so they gave up

i hurt but the pain is slowly lessening

love the nag champa

chadwick said:

let me tell you something, rgambs. when coming around after surgery im lying there in thorough agony. i literally felt/thought i had been hit by a car, took out at the legs, lying in a ditch unable to get up & walk. the nurse was telling me to calm down as i was moaning rolling back & forth. she was telling me i could rip the IV line out. she told my g/f i was misbehaving hence the delay on me getting to my room

it was so painful coming back around once anesthesia was wearing off. unreal how terrible that felt. just the worst ever. see i did not get the 4 nerve blocking shots. they tried but couldn't get it right so they gave up

Yeah if you have a bad back that can kill ypur chance for the block. The way you woke up is pretty typical, patients need restrained often... It is really confusing to come out of anesthesia, add immense pain, bright lights, unfamiliar people, that's a recipe for some "drunk strugglin" as I call it.

Well, that first sentence up there made no sense.

Color me buzzed

It says that buzzed minds think alike!

Test-driving the Scion tomorrow - can't wait. Assuming there's an initial level of comfort, fingers crossed I'll be getting it this weekend or next.

Thanks - and yes!