Patella Fracture
Yep… not exactly how I was planning on ending a really fun week with Bob and Cheryl in California!
As detailed in the last post we had decided to go for a walk around their neighborhood on Sunday morning before I left to drive home to Phoenix. We had spent a week exploring awesome places around Rancho Mirage, and yet WHERE do I do myself in??? Walking by a tennis court in their neighboorhood!
The pavement was wet and my right foot just slipped forward causing me to land on my left knee… HARD… really hard! The crack I heard I will never forget! It was pretty deformed at first, but as I forced it to straighten before the swelling kicked in I was able to push back down what I later found out was the proximal half of the patella!
Cheryl drove my car back to Phoenix with me in the back seat with my leg extended and iced! Bob followed in his car. We ended up driving directly to Honor Health Thompson Peak for X-rays!
I found out it was a 3 cm displaced transverse fracture of the patella ! They gave me a knee brace and crutches and referral to Orthopedics! So glad I had done the hip replacement with Dr. Kaper as I was so comfortable with him doing the reduction.
I met with Sherry (his N.P.) on Monday afternoon with surgery scheduled for 5:00 p.m. on Tuesday!
The surgery was totally painless! The pain came later when I had to walk around on crutches for 6 weeks with only 50% weight-bearing! My shoulders did a LOT of complaining as I went into this with weenie upper-body strength!
Dr. Kaper was all for letting me go home right after surgery which was my preference, but I found out days later when I was reading his Op Note that the only reason they kept me in the hospital overnight was because Joe requested that I stay! REALLY???!!
Six weeks after surgery I was able to do full weight-bearing and lose the crutches/walker! They asked that I keep using the knee brace for an additional 2 weeks. Following that we start Physical Therapy! I’ll go back to Maggie Klausing as she was the one I was working with prior to my hip surgery and it was so much fun working with her!
