Physical Therapy

I've been able to walk around a bit during the day, even without the crutches. I'm also down to about 2-4 Percocet a day, a huge improvement over how I was when I first came home. I decided that if I felt good enough to be up and about that I should really get on my physical therapy.

I found the sheet of paper my physical therapist sent home with me last week and began to look at the instructions. It turns out I should be doing a bit more than I've been letting myself. I no longer have to keep my knee locked straight all day and I'm allowed to walk 30-45 minutes a day at this point. The exercises are all straightforward, basically leg lifts and knee bends. The leg lifts aren't so bad, the knee bends, well those are a different story. It's amazing how quickly muscle atrophies. Naturally there is an amount of pain from within the knee but mostly I feel it in the muscles of my upper leg. It's almost like I'm too weak to actually bend my leg. I've set my brace so that when I'm up and about I can bend my knee to up to 60* of rotation, which is what I am allowed to do. When I'm laying down I lock the leg straight, still a good deal of pain if I bend it, but I'll be working to lock the leg less and less. I have a follow-up with physical therapy Friday and I'm hoping to be on schedule with my recovery by that time. I got a late start but I'm feeling a lot better than I did last week so I'm hoping I can catch up the time.

Not much more than that to update, I'll likely post again after my appointment on Friday.

It's Monday?

I really hate coming up with titles for blog entries. I don't have that much to update but I am bored and I did go to rehab today so I should at least post how that went.

Today's visit wasn't so much to start working on the knee as it was us getting to know each other and setting some goals for the recovery. Being that this wasn't a simple debridement -- look who learned how to spell -- the recovery is a bit different than I initially thought. I'm going to be stuck in a brace (we'll get pictures online soon) for at least 9 weeks while I begin to work the knee. They're not anticipating a full recovery for 6 months. Most of what I'm going to be doing is ROM (range of motion) exercises and leg strengthening. I have a sheet that details what I can and can't do right now and what exercises I should be doing now but I can't remember most of it. It's amazing how much of a cloud the Percoset puts my head in. I only need to take 3 or 4 doses a day depending on how much I'm up and about. Also they took off the wrap that was closest to my skin so the brace I've got with ice water pumping through it is far more effective.

In any event, I'm doing well and they say I should do just fine. I have a follow-up with Ortho on the 25th and another appointment with rehab on the 28th. I'll have Diana snap some photos of the braces and stitches and the setup I've got for myself in the recliner so ya'll know how I've been doing. My head is in a bit of a fog and I'm having trouble sorting my thoughts so I'm going to wrap up. I'm off for 30 days, so 25 more I think, if you wanna chat give me a call or look me up on AOL's instant messenger as jcpahman77 if you're the chatting type. I'll be here and I'd love to talk.

I'm home from surgery!!!

I really should have posted more about this earlier, like Tuesday when I had my pre-surgical consults but I forgot.

A little background for those not in the know... I injured my knee while in Iraq back in September of '08. They didn't know what the extent of the injury was then because medical facilities in Iraq are pretty much limited to life saving equipment. I had been complaining about knee pain after long convoys; in fact it was so bad that after a long convoy I couldn't bend my knees. Each time I went I was told that it was overuse and that I needed to "take it easy". Finally one day in September I was sitting on the side of a trailer with my feet on the tires. The tires on these trailers stick out several feet wider than the deck and pretty much run the length of the deck. Anyway, I went to stand up and turn at the same time to get up on the deck and just as I put weight on my right knee it snapped or popped. The kind of sound and feeling you get when you crack a knuckle for example. The leg gave out and I ended up on my butt on the deck. I couldn't fully extend my knee and I couldn't bend it past about 20 or 30 degrees. I was put on crutches for about a week and they tried to drain my knee once, but other than that not much was done while I was in Iraq.

It took a long time to get taken seriously once in the states but around May I was diagnosed with a pair of meniscal tears in my right knee. There are two meniscuses in your knee and they act like bushings between the upper bone of the leg and the lower two. An MRI showed that both my medial and lateral (inner and outer) meniscus had torn but didn't give enough resolution to see exactly how bad. The meniscus grow out of the tops of the lower bones and because they rely on the bones for blood flow they grow slowly. The plan was to go in orthoscopically de-breed the bad cartilage and then sew the ends of the good cartilage together to make the meniscuses whole again. Unfortunately when they got in there they discovered that one of the meniscuses was torn so badly that it had flapped forward into the middle of the joint. Naturally I don't remember any of this because of all the IV drugs they gave me but they told me and Diana that everything went smoothly. All I know is when I woke up it felt like someone had taken a sledge hammer to my knee and it took 6 mg's of Morphine to dull the pain.

Looking forward I have a fairly long recovery since it was not just a simple procedure like they had hoped. It's going to be three days before I can take off a brace they wrapped around my right knee and both legs have special stockings on them to help blood flow while the IV drugs work out of my system. I start physical therapy/rehab on Monday but they don't project that I'll even be able to drive a car for 6 to 8 weeks.

Appointments

I think I mentioned having an orthopedic and optometry appointment coming up in my last entry. Those dates have come and gone and there is some info that is newsworthy. My orthopedic appointment was supposed to be on the 30th, but I ended up being scheduled for a mission, so it was moved to the 6th, and now as it turns out I have funeral detail on the 6th (three funerals to do) so it's been moved again to the 20th. So sometimes no news is good news, but unfortunately I still have to wait to find any sort of prognosis for my knee.

I did have my optometry appointment on the 31st and it went well. They did about every test I've ever seen before on my eyes, very thorough. They have to measure the lens and eye shape and a few other things. Additionally you have to have an exam that's a year old to compare with a current one. I just happened to go to optometry in Iraq on the first of April so it was perfect. He then gave me a full eye exam on the 31st to compare. This doctor was good. He not only understood the troubles of a lazy eye he was impressed with the control I have over mine. I guess most people who suffer from a lazy eye have no control over when or how much that eye will drift. As some of you have seen I can move my left eye pretty much independently of my right eye. Also he said the extent to which my eye drifts in is pretty severe which added to how hard it is for me to control it. He spent about an hour on my eyes, different combinations of lenses, eye drops, filters, everything, and we came up with a solution I'm excited about. He's adding a good deal of prism to my lenses. The prism moves the image that my left eye sees to align it with my right eye, so both eyes are working together. I'm also getting two pairs of glasses; the army only allows one frame to be "wearer's choice" i.e. normal looking glasses, and the other set has to be the standard ugly Army issue frames. What's noteworthy about the two sets is I'm going to get the set of frames that looks normal in a mono-focal and the ugly Army issue frames in the bi-focal. I've often found that when I'm driving, for example, that if I need to look down to check a gauge, like my speed, that I have to move my whole head to avoid trying to see through my bi-focal lens. So I'm going to get the mono-focal set tinted ($10 at the PX) and use it for any time when I'm allowed to wear sunglasses. Formations and other formal times I'll have to wear the ugly frames since they won't be tinted but I'm going to look into having the lenses cut at the optical shop in the PX as well to see if they'll fit in my old frames.

No as far as the PRK (lasik), all the tests have been completed but they have to be submitted to the optical clinic at Ft. Hood for review since that is where the procedure is performed. Even if they approve me based on what they see from these tests there are a few more tests that can only be done at Ft. Hood, so even if I get sent to Ft. Hood I still may be denied the procedure. If that happens it really won't bother me, I've been wearing glasses since something like Kindergarten and as you can imagine I've gotten used to them.

I'll try to keep this blog updated more often now that I'm home. Work has kept me busy during the weekdays but I usually have weekends pretty free.

Knee injury update, Mom and Mr. Jones Visit

I finally have had my MRI reviewed. They verified I do have a torn meniscus, how long ago did I know this? In any event I now have an appt. with Orthopedics on the 30th to see what they are going to do. From what I understand there isn't a lot that can be done, but hopefully they know more than me. On the 31st I'm also having my eyes checked. If the lenses of my eyes are thick enough, and my eyes are bad enough, they will send me to Ft. Hood for PYK (lasik) surgery, all on the Army of course. I know my eyes are bad enough, I've been told before, but I've never had the lenses measured so I'm anxious to see what the results will be. 

Also Grandma and Grandpa Jones came down Tuesday for a visit. We went to Alamogordo yesterday to see the Toy Train Museum, a small Zoo that was excellent, and White Sands. I've never been to any of these places and it was a great trip. I've got about 400 photos to go through that are basically just yesterday and today (we went bowling today). We've been having fun all together and tomorrow is their last day here because they are moving on very early Monday morning. It will be very bittersweet because as much as we don't want to see them go Monday will be good for me since I'm still off work on my four day and the kids will be back in school.

I'm going to try to add some photos, just a few because I have such trouble with it, but hopefully they'll show up well.

The new car

I took home my new car last night. It's been a drama filled event that I'm sure is not over yet. It was for sale at a mechanic shop who was selling it for the owner. I put $100 to hold it and then came back with $900 more when our tax return came in. They didn't bite and I told them I'd get the other $300 (still a good deal for this car). What started to upset me was the fact that they couldn't get a hold of the owner to get the title. In fact I still think they charged more than the owner was asking, I'm meeting with the owner later today to get the title and straighten out any pricing issues. Yesterday they wrote me a bill of sale and I took the car home. The rules have changed on post so all I need to bring a vehicle on is my ID. Today I'm going to take it to the craft shop on post (garage) and take a good look at the car all the way around.

I have some pictures that I took last night and a couple I took this morning so I'll post those up and update things as the day goes along.

I'm painfully behind on this

It is now 5 Nov 2008 and I'm watching NCIS, all FIVE seasons, while waiting for my time in this country to expire.

What is most notable about November, well two things OK three actually, is that the First marked my two year in service mark. That's right I have been a Private in the US Army for two years. Which brings me to point 2. Two years active duty in the service, barring any misconduct, means an automatic promotion to E4 Specialist. Yes that means after MONTHS of working, straining, begging to be promoted, the Army just gave it to me. I forgot part of point one, looking back in retrospect, the two year in service mark comes with a tenure raise. That promotion to E4 also comes with a raise. The third point is that it's November, which I have said twice now, but that also means that I'll be coming home. Soon in fact. Avid followers of this blog know I cannot discuss confidential information on a public forum or unsecured channel. Suffice it to say there is not long now.

I really wish I could say more. I'm practically oozing with emotion, but nothing I want to say can be said. Those of you in Michigan can look forward to seeing the whole fam in mid-late December.

Also I'm pretty sure now that I will be going officer. I've done some more research and it seems like I pretty much qualify without anything more than I already have. Have to double check on needing a security clearance yet, but I'm working that angle too. In any event that put me in the Army for at least two more years to get a degree and that's just the time it'll take to get my commission. There is no minimum commitment time once I get a commission but with the amount of pay I'll be getting I may just stick this military thing out. A military retirement is highly desirable. Retire after 20 years and the medical benefits continue for life, for you and your spouse, and you get 50% of your base pay for life. Stick it out for 30 years and the compensation ups to 100%. Officer pay with that much time in service? I'd not only never have to work again I'd likely never need to. Once I get my commission my starting pay will $3215.10. add in housing pay, benefits, substance allowance, it really starts to add up.

That's all future though. My focus at the moment is getting out of this country. Right after I watch a few more days worth of NCIS. It seems most of you have found me on Facebook but if you would actually like  a live chat look me up on AOL's Instant Messenger, www.aim.com and look up jcpahman77. If I'm awake and the internet is working out here, I'm on.

Until we meet again in person, this is SPECIALIST Pahman, signing off...

SPC Pahman, Jesse C.

United States Army

Camp Liberty, Iraq