My birthday present was the confirmation that yes, my ACL was torn, along with needing some of my meniscus trimmed. I drove to Lincoln, to Lincoln Orthopedic Center to see Dr. Lawson. He's a pretty goofy guy, but a good doctor, and honest. While I was in Lincoln, I also got myself some crutches. I'd been borrowing some, and they were about 3-4 inches too short and very old. I still could not really walk, so crutches were a necessity. I also made a stop at a home improvement store to get a chair for the shower. Not being able to stand for showering wasn't fun at all.
The main thing I needed to do was keep my knee elevated, iced, and wrapped. I couldn't work on my house, or walk, or stand on both legs, so I watched a LOT of TV (mainly the combine and NFL draft prep type videos via the NFL Network and YouTube), and played lots of a game that I'd purchased, DayZ. It's a zombie apocalypse survival game, which means it's 'survival' and player vs player. I play it, mainly, for the PVP. If I want to learn or practice survival skills, I'll do that in real life. With my house, that's sort of what it's become! I joined a group, the "Reddit Rescue Force", 'RRF' for short. Doing this, you run around helping people who have gotten hurt. I had a local plumbing company do some work, though, to help me get my washer hooked up. They did a great job, and I learned another valuable lesson: Get a quote first, every single time.
So, back to life. Usually we have a supervisor review our time sheets to be a check for errors, and keep you from putting too much time down. Because of when I'd torn my ACL, I only had a few hours on that pay period on my check prior to being off shift. They didn't update anything (and I didn't check), so I got a paycheck in April for less than 30 hours over the previous two weeks. I had to call my mortgage company and get my payment moved back to the end of the month because 30 hours minus taxes, retirement, and healthcare wasn't even close to covering my house payment, much less the mortgage in addition my utilities and other expenses. Luckily, it's not like I'd spent much the previous two weeks, and I could cover my utilities, and gas to doctor appointments, but that was definitely an unneeded stress.
I wanted to return to work on crutches prior to surgery, in a light duty capacity, and was denied. I knew I'd be cutting it close to running out of all my paid time off (vacation/sick leave), but once you ask and are denied, there's not much else that can be done. So, I kept waiting, and resting, and gaming. I should have done more reading, looking back.
By the time I had surgery on April 17th, I could nearly walk without pain, even though I wasn't supposed to be putting any weight on it. I wasn't awake for the surgery, but from what I'm told it went well. I don't mean to brag, but I'm a very good patient when I'm knocked out. Afterward, I woke up in short stints about three times in the recovery room, but fell right back asleep. Thanks to the wonders of modern medicine, ACL reconstruction surgery is out-patient and I was able to go home that night, as soon as I ate my mandatory 'meal'. I had my brace, a cool-pack with a detachable large thermos to circulate the water, the On-Q medicine drip IV, and my crutches. That On-Q was AMAZING, I barely felt anything those first days, unless I turned the line down too much.
That very next Monday, (the 4th day after surgery) I was already in physical therapy! They unwrapped my knee for the first time since surgery and we worked on simple things like stretching and bending the knee. Obviously, my knee was pretty stiff, and getting it to bend even 30 degrees felt like quite a strain. I needed to get it limber fairly soon, I was supposed to be in a wedding that weekend. Thankfully, the bride would allow me to wear shorts instead of trying to figure out how to get dress pants over my brace and cool pack. That cool pack was my main source of pain relief at that point; I could tell when it was warming up because my knee would begin the dull ache of inflamed tendons, and ligaments.
The day before the wedding, I met the guys at the airport where we picked up the best man, and headed up to Coleridge, Nebraska, for the rehearsal dinner and bachelor party. The rehearsal went well, from what I could tell, apart my my slightly slow gait. The choice for the bachelor party was bar hopping back towards Norfolk with the groom and best man wearing squirrel suits. Only in part due to my limited mobility, I cut myself off early and got to drive the car back to Norfolk. Somewhere in the hoopla one of my crutches got bent, but I don't remember when. The wedding went great the next day, and the reception afterwards was a blast. They had a picture booth and tons of props, so we got some good pictures from that. Needless to say, I didn't dance, unless you consider making ice runs 'boogying'.
That next week would be my last week off from work before going back on light duty, so I tried to enjoy it. Other than physical therapy at the hospital, I didn't have anything scheduled for that week, and I didn't try to change that. My body was probably healthy enough to do light duty activities, but I had been told that I couldn't go back until the first full week of May, so there was nothing I could do. As it turned out with my paid time off, I had to take 20 hours of 'PTO' unpaid. In addition to losing an OT spot, and getting a super short check a few weeks prior, finances were tight.
That was one of the tougher areas of 2014 was dealing with lost income. Another valuable lesson that I had known, but hadn't taken the time to put in action was to save money, and save it intentionally. Before I purchased the house, I'd had a few thousand dollars saved up, but after I'd bought the house, and seen how much work I'd need to do to it, I emptied my savings working on the house, and hadn't bothered even attempting to refill it. I'd spent just about every penny I could trying to get tools or work on parts for the house. I hadn't known I'd be missing work, and losing money like I did, or I would have done something about it. Prepare yourself for the unexpected.
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