Ryan James O'Sullivan

My surgery went well and I got home from the hospital mid day yesterday. The doctor did more then just an ACL reconstruction so the pain and recovery stage is a touch harder/longer/more painful than I anticipated. I currently am running a fever (have been since Friday) and have quite a bit of swelling. A bit of a blow by blow:

Thursday i entered the hospital a little nervous but ready to go. After six years (almost to the day) of dealing with the fall out of the original injury and dealing with the pain I was ready to have this over and done with.

Check in at the hospital went smoothly. We had just missed someone freaking out about not getting a private room – just our luck. So I registered for my surgery and provided my insurance information so I could apply for a private or semi private room (I got neither – ended up in a four person ward room because they ran out of rooms- ahh well). After checking in we went up to the surgery prep area and I got out of my clothes and into the hospital robes. At this point it really hits home that you are about to go in for surgery and I found myself walking around saying to myself “it’ll be a long time before you can walk like this again”.

My time finally came and I was wheeled into the surgery area where I ended up having to wait for a bit. My surgery was delayed by 30 minutes because it took longer to clean up after the previous surgery then anticipated. When I got into the room I was surprised at how big the team was taking part in the operation. I also thanked my lucky stars that I live in Canada and didn’t have to pay for this – looking around the internet it looks like I would have paid around 35k in the US for this operation. My team consisted of 3 doctors, a med student and 2 nurses.

While they were getting everything setup I lay on my back and the anesthesiologist came over and started talking to me. Next thing I knew I was out cold.

I started to wake up slowly but surely and had very little pain coming out of the surgery a few hours later (surgery took the full slotted two hours). There was a lady who was dying (she died that night while getting an MRI) and the doctor was talking to her and the conversation was interesting so I focused on that to try and force myself awake. After that conversation ended I focused on the clock and had a “wow it can’t be 5pm” argument with myself in my head. At this point I was more or less awake and shortly I was off to my room.

I didn’t mind being put in a ward room – my four neighbors when I first moved in were great. The first night Tammy, my dad and my grandparents came to visit me (my mom was watching Paige). Tammy stuck around until after visiting hours and her keeping me company really helped me get adjusted to m temporary home in the hospital.

The first day was pretty much pain free courtesy of morphine.

Day two I got my introduction to morning stiffness – when you don’t take meds over night PLUS don’t move at all your knee is going to rebel and do some screaming. It took a couple doses of morphine to “catch up” to my pain and get rid of the stiffness that morning. Once I had control of the pain the physio guy came and got me out of bed and walking for the first time. Let me just say – it wasn’t easy! He also showed me a bunch of exercises that I need to do a few times a day to get my movement back.

My doctor dropped in shortly after my walk and gave me a run down of how the surgery went. Basically when he opened up the knee he discovered it was even more of a mess then once believed. So he fixed my ACL and then rebuilt several muscle groups and cut out some cartilage that was “flapping around in there”. Apparently he even tried to save me the cartilage but the nurses must have thrown it out (boo – I would have liked to keep it). So he did about an extra 45 minutes worth of surgery in what essentially was a complete rebuild of the muscles in my left knee.

We also discussed recovery times and I think I might have to take more time off from work then originally anticipated. I had planned on likely being off for 2 weeks but he wants me off an absolute minimum of four weeks with a preference for six weeks off(!). I still need to figure all this out but ya – wow a long, slow and painful recovery is ahead of me.

Late day two one of my room mates checked out (after trying to get them to give him more and more drugs – was entertaining) and his replacement was less then desirable. We knew we were in trouble when the new room mate’s family showed up hours before he got into the room and started making a tonne of noise. You are only supposed to have 2 family members in the room at a given time and he had at least 6! They were young, noisy and super annoying. We didn’t realize that was just the beginning.

When he finally did show up he was yelling and screaming in pain and it got old about as fast as you’d expect something like that to get old – in about 10 seconds. We found out the next morning when the nurses checked his morphine why he was in so much pain… he had only taken 7 doses of morphine the whole time he was there since his surgery (we were all on self medicating morphine machines – basically the machine limits how much you can get but you press a button and it administers your dose through your IV). One of my room mates checked himself out of the hospital a day early because of this guy – he was just brutal. I was lucky enough to have my bed right beside him! Go me!

Day three my third and final day was a pretty quick as far as the hospital goes. I woke up pretty early in the morning mostly because of Mr Idiot so I listened to my iPod quite a bit (to block him out) and I drifted in and out of sleep. After breakfast the physio people dropped by again this time to show me how to use crutches (which I’m absolutely useless with) and how to walk up stairs. The lesson was good but was super draining.

After that it was pretty much home time. Getting into the van to get home took me about an hour and was probably the most pain I’ve been in since the surgery.

I’m home now and Tammy is doing a wonderful job taking care of me. There have been some complications post surgery (not with the knee luckily). I have a lot of swelling and I have had a fever since Friday – so we are monitoring all of that closely.

I’m on orders to get back in touch with my doctor and the hospital if the fever isn’t gone by tomorrow – so we’re going to have to see how that goes.

(My apologies if any of this post doesn’t make sense – I’m very heavily medicated at the moment and I’ve been falling asleep the last half of this post )

I’m getting my ACL reconstructed today and I’m on my way to the hospital. Just thought I’d throw a quick note up to let people know I will be out of touch for a few days. I am in the hospital until at least Saturday and it’ll likely be Monday before we tone down the pain killers enough that I’ll be able to function in any way shape or for.

So see you guys in a few days – hold down the internets-fort for me

I had a nice surprise this week when we headed up north for the first weekend of the cottage season – we got community wifi and cell phone service!!!

The question is – is this a good thing? My father is a little edgy about my younger sister playing with her phone all the time and I must admit the temptation to come in and fire up the intertubes is very odd. Obviously I am someone who has a very connected life so for me its a huge win BUT does it take away from the “up north” feel of Coe Hill?  I’m not sure just yet!

I’ve found this weekend I’ve been able to resist temptation but who knows. My will power will be put to the test this summer for sure

This is going to work out great however during my surgery recovery I’ll be able to come up here and recover in peace while being able to stay online and keep up with my work load. Throughout the summer it also means I’ll be able to work on various projects that I currently have on the go – projects in the summer for me are brutal because when you don’t have any weekend time it becomes very hard.

So is the internet and cell phone service in Coe Hill a good thing? It looks like, but I’m going to have to throw in a healthy dose of moderation

One of World of Warcraft premier raid guilds, Death and Taxes has disbanded. These guys always seemed a bit of an oddity to me as far as raid guilds go; they seemed to be a group of guys (and gals) in it for the right reasons: to have fun, enjoy the game with a group of friends, etc.

They’ve now broken up and one of the guild’s leaders has made a post over on their forums that illustrates better then anything I’ve ever seen before the importance of never losing your way as a guild. It is very important as guild leadership to know what your group of people is about and what you want to accomplish as a guild. Even if you aren’t one of those “formal” guilds that has a charter – I’d highly recommend a mission statement. It’s such a shame to see a guild who’s worked so hard on progression just evaporate.

Progress doesn’t happen all in 1 night, but apparently some people that we had here didn’t understand that. They thought bosses just fell over the first night because of the tag over their head, and the most important thing was how much damage they could do at all times. Newsflash – it doesn’t work like that. It’s pretty ironic that the first people to jump ship when progress wasn’t going fast enough, were the same ones jerking off in the 5man, and holding up the raid on the first day. Progress takes time, and world firsts don’t fall from the sky, they’re the result of a lot of hard work, and effort. The reputation of this guild was built on the backs of a lot of hard work and dedication from EVERYONE. The guild was bigger than any of us, and we knew it.

…..

Once upon a time we had pride. Pride in our guild, pride in ourselves, pride in what we’d done. Pride is showing up and giving your best effort, ESPECIALLY when you don’t want to be there, because your guildmates deserve that. We didn’t always get world firsts, it’s impossible to always be first, that’s just not how the game works, but we showed up every day, EARLY and busted our asses, and we were proud of what we accomplished, be it world first or world 1000th. We didn’t whine or complain about our fucking groups, or worry about loot. We killed bosses. Period. We gave our best effort because those around us deserved it, because the guild deserved it. We had pride about what we had done, not what those before us had done. But we also didn’t have false pride. Once upon a time when people couldn’t or didn’t want to keep up the raiding schedule, they had the guts and decency to let the rest of us know. Now they slink off into the night without even a word.

Read the whole post here.

The above embedded movie is a youTube preview (if you will) of the surgery I will be undergoing next week. Please join me in being terrified!I’ve been waiting for this surgery stoically trying not to worry about it at all (the risks are fairly minimal (outside of you know, a shit tonne of pain)). I’ve done a bit of reading – mostly based on the materials provided to me by my doctor (he charged me 150 dollars for said materials so I figured I better read them) until today when I decided I’d see what the internet has to offer. If there is one thing Jim has taught me in 10 years of friendship its that you really shouldn’t EVER, EVER IN YOUR LIFE see what the internet has to offer. It will terrify you and make you dead inside.

Well apparently researching evasive surgery is one of those things you should add to the list of the-internets-top-100-things-to-avoid (man – I could make a fortune). Look at that video – look at that asshole cranking away at that guys knee… look at them leaving his leg dangling there like a piece of meat!!!

So that’ll be me. Google ACL surgery and check out the images… doesn’t that look like a walk in the park? (har har irony from the limp knee’d jack ass).

In all for serious I’ll be out of comission for a week at least. More likely 3 weeks before I see return to a decent level of function. The plan with work at the moment is to take the first week and work from home and then return to the office in the second week. I’ve left my calander booked as out of office for that next week just in case – we’ll see how it goes.

And now the up side of all of this – After about 9 months I should be able to play sports, etc again. I’m really looking forward to returning to a decent level of function (I’ve been unable to run for almost 7 years now!!!) and getting back into baseball, paintball and the other things I’ve been missing to the point of depression (the last couple years in particular have been really rough as I’ve started putting on weight for the simple fact I just cannot be active enough to live as I always have). Baseball of course is number one. Next spring I want to get my umpire card again and get back into the swing of offciating the game I love. I’d also love to get back on the mound maybe with a B team as a starter (my arm is still 100% – I just need to get my bat and legs back) and see if I can work my way up to an A, AA, or AAA team. I’m still young enough I could pull out a nice little weekend career for 10 or so years (maybe not the AAA career I once hoped for )

So yeah… good and bad. But I’m mostly seeing the bad a week out

So I’ve been neglecting the old blog a bit. Free time has been at a premium (obviously) so I just haven’t had the chance I’d like to post on here. Summer is coming so I’m afraid the neglect might continue – maybe with my laptop up north I’ll get more blogging done (one can hope).

Paige is doing well. Tammy is doing well. Paige has been growing up at an incredible pace and it seems like every day she is doing something new. A few days ago now she started sitting up on her own and now it seems like she doesn’t want do anything other then sitting up. She’s also eating solid food now and making some fantastic messes.

Gaming wise EQ2 has been my primary focus. I hit level 80. Got my epic. We’ve been doing a lot of raiding and having a blast.

So just a quick update  I’ll try and get a more substantional post up sooner or later