Left Knee Arthroscopy

I had surgery May 6th on my knee.  I was absolutely dreading it!  My doctor made a DVD of the surgery and gave it to me.  He talks to me through the whole thing!  He'll say something like, "OK Judy, this is your lateral meniscus.  We're just going to clean it up here..."

 This is my meniscus...it was deteriorating. 

I know there were at least 3 different tools he was using.

 The meniscus reminded me of cotton...

or cotton candy..

real fibrous.

 This is where I turned it off at least 4 times.

Red = blood

Blood and Judy don't mix very well.

 I'm curious what all this liquid is.

Were they squirting it in my knee to be able to work on it better?

 This tool was different.  See those coil looking things?

Well, they rotated I think.  He would sluff material off my knee...just running this tool up next to tissue or whatever it was and it cut it off kind of like a weed wacker!

 Here he was cleaning up around my kneecap!  That's the kneecap on the bottom.

 More cleaning around the kneecap...

 Uh-oh...see those white nodules on the right, just behind and to the right of that tool? 

bone spurs...

 See that whitish bump in the lower right?

That's a bone spur!

 This whiter rounded thing about in the middle is another bone spur..

 This tool could open up at the end...

and just cut that bone spur right off!

The bone spur is....gone!

 This is how I came home...For three days, I didn't take it off except to do a mild stretching exercise of my knee...then this went right back on.

 At the end of 3 days, we took the bandaages off,

just placing bandaids over the incisions..

then re-wrapping with one ace bandage (there were 3 over about 20 4 x 4 gauze pads)

and the brace...

The doctor told me not to be alarmed when I took the bandages off.

He said my knee would most likely be pink, warm, the incisions would be draining, and it would be swollen.  Well, it is definitely still swollen, but it wasn't pink, wasn't warm, and no drainage at all out of the incisions!

So far so good!

Anyone interested in being an orthopedic surgeon?

This would be a common sight for you!