It’s been a week since I’ve had surgery. It came about all too suddenly when I was notified that my “end of August” surgery was being pushed up to Aug. 2 based on the doctor’s schedule. It was such a fast surgery.
My husband dropped me off for a 9 a.m. check-in, the nurses were in the next moment wheeling me out to our car for the ride home by 2:30 that afternoon. I mean…I was in and out! Back in the day, an ACL surgery was bound to lay you up in the hospital for several days, with your leg elevated. Now, you’re home by dinner.
healing from an ACL Surgery
I’ve been in recovery mode, which means that my leg still needs to be raised and the ice machine must be attached. The doctor said I would now need to be in this ankle-to-butt-cheek brace for about a month. Yikes! I also have to schedule physical therapy and so we’ve had to make arrangements for sitters. In a nutshell, children don’t understand when you aren’t well. There is no such thing as a sick day for parents. We’re mommies and daddies, 24/7/365. This is the price we pay for bearing the incredible and awesome responsibility of parenting a child.
While I am glad my ACL reconstructive surgery and meniscus repair is finally taken care of, the laborious healing process begins. The life lesson I’ve learned through this comes from the job that the ACL does. The ACL stabilizes the knee. With instability comes uncertainty. I take my knee surgery as a metaphor for life. If we don’t have stability, we are unable to feel certain about our future. If we don’t have something as small as our ACL, the ability to walk becomes insecure. Injury occurs, collapses become routine, and suddenly we’re living in an unsafe place where we can’t trust our limbs to hold us up.
Lesson 2 Be Learned
Every part of our body, no matter how small and seemingly trivial, serves a purpose that matters. Who would have thought something as small as the ACL length of 38 mm (range 25 to 41 mm) and width of 10 mm (range 7 to 12 mm) could have so much power over our ability to move forward in our lives. Something so small matters, which reminds me that stability happens when the smallest of things are healed.
You are doing amazing!