Inches by Emma Geisser

INCHES a documentation book POST SURGERY

INCHES

a documentation book post surgery

INCHES

a documentation book post surgery By: Emma Geisser ÂŠ 2015 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced without permission. The opinions expressed in this book are those of the author only and not those of York College of Pennsylvania. This book is an experimental class project for purely educational design purposes. Design by Emma Geisser Printed by www.lulu.com

Table of Contents ONE Pre Surgery 8 TWO Back to the Basics 16 THREE All the Aftermath 30

Inches: Preface It’s crazy how inches work. For sports, an inch too soon, you miss a pass. An inch too late you miss a shot. One half an inch too far away and you don’t finish in time. We are in a constant need for inches. For me, an inch too late led to one of the toughest things I’ve had to experience; back to back knee surgeries. It all happened so fast; I fell to the floor and heard a pop. It felt like my knee was detached from my leg. I got carried out to the training room by my coach and just sat down and looked at my knee, which really looked like two knees in one because it was so swollen. A few days later I went to get an MRI and my doctor said that I needed surgery. I remember thinking how surgery is every athletes fear because you get stripped away from the thing you are absolutely passionate about. When I heard that word come out of my doctor’s mouth my heart sunk, I was completely devastated. After my surgery things started looking up, until I was doing my physical therapy and my stitches burst. I went to see the doctor the next day and I he told me that I needed to have a second knee surgery. He originally told me that I was only going to be out three to four weeks. Little did I know, three weeks would turn into 56 weeks. This book is my documentation post surgery about all the ups, downs, and in-betweens that I’ve experienced during my journey.

Chapter 1:

PRE SURGERY

SIZE FRUIT ofWATER of a GRAPE

FISH 2

out

02/09/2015 It all happened so fast. Mid-play, my teammate stepped a couple inches over the line and I landed directly on her foot. I immediately collapsed to the ground, grabbing my right knee. The pain was intense. I kept rolling around the ground like a fish out of water. The trainer ran out and carried me to the training room. My knee was swollen to the size of a grapefruit. Streams of tears came rolling down my face. This is it. Thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s all that I could think of. Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m done.

02/10/2015 My doctor took one look at my knee put a little pressure on it and he told me that I had a meniscus tear and two cysts on my hamstring tendon and possibly had a MCL tear. Honestly, I was so relieved because I thought that I tore my ACL.That specific tear is an athleteâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s worst nightmare solely because the recovery time is close to one year. My doctor told me that I would only be out three to four weeks, which really is no time at all and he said that it should be a quick surgery and that I should be back and ready in no time, thank God.

QUICK surgery

? 5

I WILL get

BETTER I HAVE TO

02/17/2015 Wow, I’m so nervous. Today is the day that I’ve been waiting for, this dreaded surgery. My Dad is in Thailand, across the world, where there is a 12 hour time difference from York, PA. Here I am, all alone in the waiting room about to be sedated and cut open. I don’t think that people really understand how hard it is for an athlete to not play the sport that they love. I’m such an active person, which makes having this surgery 100 times harder. This journey has barely begun and it’s already been so hard. I keep telling myself while I’m waiting that I will get better, I have to or else it’s going to kill me.

Chapter 2:

BACK TO THE BASICS

02/18/2015 Day one after surgery, my knee doesn’t even feel like its attached to my leg. My knee surgery was only supposed to take 45 minutes, and it ended up taking over three and a half hours. My incision is approximately three and a half inches long, which is not what I was expecting at all. I woke up the night before with excruciating pain because my pain medicine started to wear off.Yep, this really sucks.Today is the first day to the start of my physical therapy. I’m extremely limited to the things that I can do now. My knee doesn’t feel like it’s a part of my body anymore. It feels like it’s just dangling there, so helpless.

NOT attached

TO MYLEG 11

LOSTmy IDENTITY

03/10/2015 It’s been about a month since my initial surgery and I’m feeling great. I lightly jogged today and rode the bike, which is a huge stepping-stone for me. It’s nice having actual sweat come off my face; I’m starting to feel like an athlete again. Having surgery has been a poison to me. It’s been destroying me in every way possible, physically, emotionally, and mentally. I think the hardest part about this entire process is that I physically can’t be active like I once was. For me, the best stress reliever is to work out because it makes me feel happier and more relaxed. I’m so used to working out every day and taking that away has really made me feel like I lost my identity.

knees OF AYEAR

OLD

03/15/2015 Everything was going really well for me. I started to feel like myself again, until today. I was biking at the gym for part of my rehab exercises, just doing all the normal rehab that I’ve been doing and all of a sudden I felt a pop. I looked down and I had over a cup of fluid running down my pants, soaking my socks, shoes, and covered the ground. I went back to the Doctor the next day, and he told me that my stitches burst and if I don’t get emergency surgery my stitches would get infected. So, here I, 20 years old, have to have two back-to-back knee surgeries within a month from one another. I’m starting to feel like I have the knees of a 90 year old.

03/16/2015 An injury is hard to push through. Having a surgery is detrimental. Your body is never the same after a surgery, let alone having two surgeries within a month of each other. It’s just so unreal to me. My surgeon said he’s never had someone’s stitches burst before. Of course, just my luck. I was making such great progress with my therapy and my confidence started to spike again. I don’t understand what I did to deserve such an awful thing. I was doing everything right with my therapy. I wasn’t doing anything that I wasn’t supposed to be doing. It just happened. Why me?

i was MAKING

GREAT PROGRESS

LETSget this

THING OVER WITH

03/17/2015 St Patrick’s Day, here I am having a second knee surgery. I don’t think I’ve ever felt so defeated in my life. I’m just ready to get this thing over with. I remember laying down on the cold table and my surgeon came up to me and asked if I was ready. I responded, “I guess so” and a tear rolled down my face. He continued to mark my right knee which was getting cut open and wheeled me into the operation room. Two hours went by and I woke up and had the worst case of chills of my life. I was uncontrollably shaking and shivering. My doctor said I was experiencing hypothermia which apparently is common when a patient regains consciousness after surgery.

03/24/2015 It’s been one week since I had my second surgery. I can already feel how different my knee feels compared to the initial surgery that I had. Everything has changed for me. I know now that I’m going to be out a lot longer than what was originally planned for me. I feel like I took 5 steps forward, making great progress with my therapy and strengthening my knee, but this second surgery has put me 20 steps behind. I feel helpless having people constantly opening the door for me and asking me what happened to my knee, again. It hasn’t gotten any easier, it just keeps getting harder and harder.

5STEPS

STEPS FORWARD

BEHIND

Chapter 3:

ALL THE AFTERMATH

10/17/2015 Today marks exactly eight months since my first knee surgery. I went to my doctor at home and he told me that I have permanent nerve damage from my knee to my ankle because my surgeon nicked my nerve during the second surgery. I feel like I can’t catch a break. This process has been grueling and awful, but I have truly learned so much from it already. There comes a day in every athlete’s life where they can’t play the sport they love anymore and they can only watch. That day that an athlete can’t play anymore they realize how much they took the sport they loved for granted. I have the opportunity unlike anyone else. I get to completely rebuild my body the way I want it to be. Bad things do happen to good people and there are no explanations for it. I’m trying to learn from these surgeries so it will make me a stronger person.

NERVE DAMAGE? I CAN’T CATCH A BREAK

10/20/2015

EVERY

THING HAPPENS for a

REASON

I think the biggest fear that I have is that I’m never going to be able to be as active as I once was again. I’m scared that I’m going to blow my knee out again and need surgery again. I’m scared that I’m never going to be myself again. I don’t know if I could mentally handle having a third surgery. I’ve been so careful with my rehab process because of living in fear or the “what ifs”. I’m understanding that we all have something holding us back. I don’t want to live the rest of my life in fear of the unknown. I am a strong believer in that everything happens for a reason. If I am meant to play volleyball and be as active as I once was, it will it will happen. If I get injured and need another surgery than that’s just the way it was supposed to be, but I will never know unless I try.

10/29/2015 My knee is getting stronger and stronger every day. Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m actually playing volleyball for the first time in about nine months and I am excited more than ever to have the opportunity to play again. I feel that I have been locked up behind a cage these last couple of months and Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m finally being freed. Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m not one hundred percent where I want to be yet, but I am stronger than I was yesterday. Time is something that I have absolutely not control over and at some point time is always going to run out. I have to keep telling myself that. Despite this long process, my rehab will end one day and I will be stronger than ever.

TIME is

ALWAYS GOING TO RUN

OUT

WELL, I’M HEALTHY, ALIVE

11/03/2015 I feel like I’ve been taking my life for granted. I’m alive, healthy, and well. There are so many people in this world that are starving, homeless, and jobless. There are people in this world that don’t have any arms or legs and would do anything to have the leg that I have, a leg that I feel is completely useless. When I think about the bigger picture I feel like a brat complaining about my bum knee. There are hundreds of people that have surgeries every day. Nothing makes my surgery and less different than these hundreds of people that are experiencing the same difficulties as myself.

11/04/2015 It’s been a very long and slow couple of months since my two previous surgeries. I can’t help but to wonder, why me? Why was I the one who got her whole world flipped upside down? Why did I have to miss out on my senior year of college volleyball? These questions that I ask myself really question why bad things happen to good people, and for the longest time I couldn’t think of an answer. But I saw a quote that Sylvester Stallone once said, “The world ain’t always sunshine and rainbows. It’s a very mean and nasty place and I don’t care how tough you are it will beat you to your knees and keep you there permanently if you let it. It ain’t about how hard you get hit. It’s about how hard you get hit and keep moving forward. How much you can take and keep moving forward”. Keep moving forward, that’s the only shot I have.

Ain’t always

SUNSHINE & RAINBOWS

MAKE the

BESTof

ANYTHING 32

11/05/2015 When I first started to document my initial surgery I focused on only finding the good in my everyday life because of all the bad days that I was experiencing. However, some days it felt nearly impossible to find the good in everything. The world that we live in is a dark and nasty place at times and will beat you to a pulp if you let it. But once you have taken that initial hit you can either let it beat you down and kick you to your knees or you can use that hit to your advantage and keep pushing forward.The happiest people in this world donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t have the best of everything; they make the best of anything. The choice lies in your hands.