The entire month of March was one very long countdown to the surgery date. I had been waiting for the operation for over a year, and I just wanted to get my knee fixed.

Prior to my operation I watched as many vlogs and read as many blogs as I could find about MPFL Reconstruction. There weren’t that many, and even so, I still had very little idea of what to expect because everyone’s surgery experience is different. the best one I could find was Kristine Camin’s MPFL Diaries. Go check them out if you have a chance.

My check-in time was 12 PM. I could not eat or drink from 12 AM until after surgery, so I ate “breakfast” at 11:18 PM and gulped down as much water as I could.

The entire surgery day was surreal. In the morning I was so weak and tired so I just stayed in bed to conserve energy. We left the house at 9:40, and it took two hours to get to the surgery center because traffic was terrible.

After check-in, I was shown to the pre-operation room where I was introduced to my nurse, anesthesiologist, and my surgeon, Dr. Strauss. My parents joined me a bit after. My nurse asked a bunch of basic health questions and confirmed about 5 times that my left leg was getting operated on. The anesthesiologist reminded me of my chem teacher for some reason, which was nice because my chem teacher is awesome! That calmed me down a lot. When the anesthesiologist inserted the IV I was afraid it would hurt a lot, but I surprisingly felt almost nothing.

Dr. Strauss explained the operation to my parents and myself (minus all the screwing and drilling of course). I remember his shoes were amazing: Crocs with woodland print! His confidence made me feel a lot better.

After all the introductions, I changed into the hospital gown and watched a cooking show the nurse had put on for me for about twenty minutes. Then, once the nurse got a notification that everything was ready to go, she walked me down to the operating room. My mom said bye to me probably ten times.

When we walked into the OR, it took me a while to realize I was actually in the OR because I did not have my glasses on, and I was so disoriented from lack of food and water. I‘m going to do my best to describe the OR. There were two tables, one right in front of me and one to the left. To my right was a table with an array of tools (most likely scalpels and drills; good thing I didn’t get a good look at those.) Everything was either blue, white, or metal. Huge gadgets were hanging from the ceiling. There was something similar to the light a dentist uses hanging from the ceiling, too, only this kind of light had four arms branching from it and it was about as large as a computer monitor.

Besides Dr. Strauss, anesthesiologist, and nurse, there were three other assistants wearing masks and scrubs, talking about random stuff and having a grand old time. Here I was in some dingy hospital gown about to get sliced open, and they were just talking like they were at Starbucks! I give them lots of credit though—every person in the term works incredibly hard. They probably go through more than 10 operations a day.

My anesthesiologist made me get on the table to my left. It was a really skinny table, about six inches smaller than a twin-sized mattress. I had no idea how I would balance on it, but I did. She hooked my IV onto a drip and said she was going to look at my nerves through an ultrasound to find a good place to inject the nerve block. I wanted to see the ultrasound but I couldn‘t see anything, and I also wanted to know where they would inject the nerve block. The anesthesiologist kept telling me to lie back down. I kept getting up trying to see, so I guess she got annoyed and decided to sedate me first. I remember she placed a mask over my face and told me to take big deep breaths in. And then I was out.

I do not remember getting the nerve block injection. After breathing into the mask, the next thing I remembered was hearing Dr. Strauss say, “Everything went really well!” And the anesthesiologist saying, “You did really great!” which meant the surgery was done. I passed out for a little while after that. Then, I remember slowly waking up in the recovery room. There were many patients next to me recovering, and a nurse was at my side. There was a bitter taste in my mouth so I asked to spit it out; the nurse said it was the IV fluid. I also told the nurse I was a little nauseous, so she said she would give me a shot in my right leg to ease the nausea. If I had been fully conscious I would have backed out immediately, but I just let her administer the shot. It was a huge needle, and it hurt a lot. But at least the dizziness went away.

After that, the nurse gave me some food and my parents came in. They looked really relieved, and I was glad for that. I waited a little bit until I was fully awake to get changed, use the bathroom, and finally go home. I also felt a little short of breath after they unhooked me from the IV, which was strange because my oxygen levels were at 100. But it went away.

I should also mention that my leg was wrapped in an Ace bandage and fitted into the big fat immobilizer. I couldn‘t feel the inside of my leg, from the lower part of my thigh to a little bit above my ankle.

The ride home was pretty smooth, although I did have to stop at Target along the way to use the bathroom again. IV fluids make you pee a lot, apparently.

We got home at around 9:30. I did not have much of an appetite so I just ate five spoonfuls of rice and swallowed one Percocet for painkillers. At this point, I could feel the nerve block slowly wearing off, but the pain was not unbearable… yet.

You just got to take everything slow, you know!

I‘ll be back very soon with a Week 1 Update. Meanwhile, I will be sleeping, eating lots of pills, trying to catch up on homework, and trying to be optimistic. :DD