ACL Pre-Surgery preparation

Now that I had picked a date, the next step was to prepare for the surgery and rehabilitation. Though it is a routine surgery in US, it is a 2-3 hour diagnostic and repair combined surgery. My parents asked me to wait a couple of weeks so that at least one of them could come to take care of me after the surgery. I had always been an independent person and have taken whatever life has thrown at me till now. I thought I could handle this alone too. Here was my plan.

Thursday March 20th Surgery: If in morning then whole day off work else half day off work.
Friday March 21st Dressing the day after: Work from home
Saturday & Sunday: Full rest
Monday March 24th: Start going office...4th day after surgery.
Monday March 31st: Stitches cut and physio therapy start.

If you already know about ACL repair, you must be laughing really hard. I was way off mark and my planning was based on me taking it lightly as it was "Out-patient" surgery. I talked to a friend, Mandeep, who had ACL arthoscopy in both his legs. After opening one of his leg, the doctor found out that MRI was wrong and his ACL was intact:) He told me that I should not even think of staying along after the surgery for at least a week. So I modified my plan and decided to stay with my friend till Sunday night and go to work on Monday. Later I will find out that even this was way ambitious plan.

I was informed that someone has to be there to pick up from hospital and they would not let me go out on my own. Yes you guessed it right, I was planning to haul my ass back home myself using a cab. I collected all my papers and asked 3-4 friend to be there. They all agreed and that is pretty much what I planned.

Two days before the surgery, Dr Bach's office informed me that mine was the first surgery of the day, so I had to be in the office by 6am for a 7am surgery. As I knew that I will not be able to play racquetball again for along time 6-9 months, I spent the rest of the week playing racquetball as much as possible. In fact, I was playing racquetball the night before going under the knife.

Over all I was pretty cool about it. Though the thought not getting out of general anesthesia did come to my mind, I was not too much stress about it. I had an application Go-Live on Monday Mar 17th. Also, I crammed everything except hair styling before the surgery as I was not sure about the condition after the surgery. I also canceled the travel plan. In the short time (less than a week) that I had, I couldn't call as many friends as I would have liked to. And so the day of the surgery dawned.