I'll Show You Mine If You Show Me Yours...

Ahem. I mean my knee, you perverts. Get up out of the gutter and onto the curb with me, y'all.

So presenting...ta da! My ACL reconstruction. This is what it looks like when you have such pleasantness performed on your knee. If you are like my sister, you could look at this for hours because the human body fascinates you. Me, on the other hand? Yeah. Looking at this is about as bad as that one time that I was watching "Fear Factor", and the contestants had to eat a PIG UTERUS. Shall I repeat that? A PIG UTERUS. For $50,000. And I am sorry, but 50 grand is just not enough to get me to choke something like that down.

But again. There I go with my forte', the digressing. And the dry-heaving. Which is not something I am really good with, as my previous sentence suggests, but whatever.

But since I don't want to be the only one retching all over the place, I thought I would share photos of my surgery with you, my favorite internet friends. Admit it - this is the post you have been waiting on the edge of your seats for!

So from what I have been able to glean from my physical therapists, the process was something this: the surgeons make about a 2 inch incision in the front of your calf, shove a 6-7 inch pipe into it (and around and then up) into the backside of your thigh, and somehow cut one of your hamstrings out (why they don't just start from the backside in the first place is beyond me). Then they have to DRILL HOLES into your femur and your tibia, and once that is done, they lace your newly extracted hamstring up (and around and through) like it is a running shoe, screw it down, and voila! You get this:

That's yummy. I think the shots on the bottom are supposed to represent the lack of a functioning ACL, and the ones on top show the actual threading of the old hammie (aka new ACL).

Now go and eat a sandwich or something really excellent without recalling that loveliness.

The other day I received a summary of the charges from my insurance. Some of these make my teeth hurt, and some of them were just plain lame:

• Water (for injection) - $20.62. For water. I hope it was blessed and holy or came from the fountain of youth for that price, but whatever;
• Endoscopic Drill Bit - $171.51 (do you think that DeWalt makes these for the medical world?);
• Blade Abrader - $171.51 (what the hell is that? It sounds scary.);
• Blade Bone Cutter - $286.18 (OMG! A bone cutter?)
• Pin Passing Drill - $171.51 (the thought of which makes me want to pass out);
• Post Fixation - $171.51 (I am guessing this is where the screw comes in?); and finally -
• Gait Training - $57.25, which consisted of a guy spending about 2 minutes with me after surgery (while I was still under the influence of morphine) showing me how to use crutches. Brilliant time to work in a little training. And do you think that's his hourly rate?

I'm such a pansy! The good news is that I can walk again, and even bend a little, even though I think I am turning into a transformer (thanks to my unruly leg brace). I even suspect the brace manufacturers may have put a tag on the inside that says "One size fits none". Must investigate this.

Do I sound like I am whining? THAT'S BECAUSE I AM. Because today, I am not here, skiing:

Just kidding! I am doing really well, and just ready to be back to normal. Thanks to all of you who keep asking.