Surgery complete, recovering nicely!

It has been two weeks since I had my ACL reconstructive surgery, and things have been going really well. I have been using my cool new joint brace so I can bend my leg, and every day I can bend my knee a little bit more than the day before. I am almost completely off Percocet, and my pain is manageable with just Ibuprofen.  I am really hoping to get back to work soon!!

The biggest victory is that I am finally mentally back to my old self. After anesthesia and lots of narcotic pain medication, I was stuck in a brain fog that made it difficult to function. I would do things like shower or talk on the phone, and it felt like someone else was doing it, and I was just observing. It was the strangest feeling, and I didn't like it! For those of you who follow me on Twitter, you have probably noticed I haven't been very active, and this is exactly why. All I could do was sit on the couch and watch TV. I tried to play a video game, but it didn't work very well. It is very difficult to control a character in a virtual world when the real world feels virtual. Being back to normal is wonderful though. I can write, tweet, and play video games again. And I am able to help around that house again too, making my wife much happier!

As I mentioned in my last post, I am still overwhelmed with video games, thanks to GameFly and my buddy Sean. I still have the Sly Collection and now El Shaddai from GameFly, and Red Dead Redemption, Catherine, and Batman: Arkham Asylum from Sean. I am really digging El Shaddai right now though! It is on of the coolest games that I have ever played, and I think that it is awesome that a game has finally taken a story from Judeo-Christian mythology and adapted it into a great game. If you haven't tried it yet, go download the demo and play!

It is time for one of our favorite holiday seasons: Halloween! We will be buying pumpkins probably tomorrow, so look forward to some pictures of our carvings soon. Follow me on Twitter to see them first @NinjaPatBeck. Otherwise, I will create a blog post with pictures in the future. Thanks for reading!

Still home, waiting for surgery...

Well, as you can tell from the title of the post, I am still sitting at home, out of work, waiting to go in for surgery on my knee. One month ago to the day, I tore my ACL playing walleyball at a work top performers celebration. Workers compensation makes everything much slower to process than it should normally take. You may think that over a month off work would be awesome, but I have about had it. That is part of why I started this blog; to maintain my sanity. My wife is still  working, so for a large part of the day, 5 days a week, I am stuck at home, mostly immobile, alone. Try it sometime, and you will know why I want to get back to work.

My surgery is scheduled for Tuesday, October 4. During my last visit with the doctor, he explained how they reconstruct a torn ACL. To my surprise, the ACL is not something that can be fixed, so they will be fashioning me a new one. The doctor told me that he will be removing two strands of my hamstring tendon, which doesn't affect or compromise any stability, and using those to replace my now defunct ACL. After hearing that, I was blown away by how cool the human body is, to be able to let a ligament be replaced by a tendon, and have it function as normal.

Here are some picture to show you the fun that I have been having...

This is the night of the injury, after going to the ER. I am in the back of the car while my amazing wife is in the pharmacy, getting my prescriptions filled.

This is also night of injury, at Walmart. We bought a pair of shorts and a pair of track pants for me to wear. It has been a month since I have worn jeans...

On days that Uriah has off work, we have been baking and cooking quite a bit together. Uriah found a really good recipe for clafoutis, and we have made several different kinds. We have also been making a lot of salsa with the produce that we have been getting from Uriah's mother out of their garden. Here are a few pictures to make you hungry:

This is a corn and black bean salsa. The only ingredient that wasn't fresh were the black beans, which we got out of a can. This salsa was gone within 2 days, it was that good!

Raspberry Clafoutis

Peach Clafoutis, using fresh peaches from Uriah's mother's peach tree. They are the best yellow peaches I have ever had in my life.

Aside from cooking and eating, I have been using this down-time to play lots of video games and some reading. So far, I have beat God of War 1 and 2, Child of Eden, Sly Cooper 1, Shadows of the Damned, Bastion, Bayonetta, and Stacking. I am currently playing Sly Cooper 2, God of War 3, Burnout: Crash, Catherine, Red Dead Redemption, Batman: Arkam Asylum, and Final Fantasy 6. I know that it is a lot of games to be playing at once, but I have gamer ADD, so I switch games pretty regularly.

That's all I've got on my mind right now, so I will leave it at that for now. I have opened this posting to comments, so let me know what you think of my blog, or let me know what you would like me to write about with my next post. Thanks for reading!