A Checkup On Luann's Knee

We had to take off a little early from work today to stop by the orthopedic surgeon's office to check on her knee and to have her post-surgery bandage removed.

Here is a view of the doctor's handiwork. The blue pen 'artwork' from the surgeon is still on her knee. If you look at the back of the wrist on her right hand, you can see the circular bruise from the IV they put in for the surgery.

It looks like Luann isn't happy with me taking pictures of her.

Yeah, that would be confirmation of my suspicions. I uhm, had to edit out the full ''extent' of her emotional display...

This picture is of a model they have to show the function and construction of the knee joint. The arrow points to the area that was worked on.

We even got pictures of the athroscopic procedure to show what had to be done. This picture shows the ligament under the kneecap and how it has been frayed some. The surgery cleaned up the fraying.

This picture shows the partial tear in the meniscus at about the 2-2:30 position. The dark line from left-to-right is supposed to be straight and not have the triangular piece at the right. That's the tear. As for the round, silvery thing at the bottom of the image, that's just a bubble.

This picture shows a 'pearl' in the lower-right part of the image where a piece of cartilage had torn loose and settled into that position in the knee joint and was eventually covered over like a pearl in an oyster. This was also removed during the surgery in order to free up her knee. So, the surgery is done and the bandage has been removed. Now the physical therapy has to be done. We worked on her Range Of Motion excercises tonight, and things aren't too bad. We'll keep you posted on her progress...