The knee incident

So I hurt my knee pretty badly on August 26th. I thought it might be good to record the incident to look back on, in case I ever consider running again ;)

Here's what happened: Nathan had the day off (b/c he had just worked about 85 hours the week before and has to work two doubles this weekend, one day off is only fair, right?) anyway, we decided to do a little hike at Peavy arboretum, Luke and I lagged behind as he was adventuring and I told Nath to take Eis ahead and we'd catch up. So as Luke and I catch up we decide to run along the trail for fun...I usually hate running, but I want to like it since it is good exercise, right? WRONG! It is BAD!! So like I said running along, Luke is just ahead of me and I trip over a tree root, and fall HARD. I get up and look at my knee, (jeans had a hole on one knee, this is the injured knee) It looks like the fabric is all covered in mud and I tug on it to get a better look underneath, but realize quickly that it is my knee I am pulling on, not fabric. I take a deep breath, tell Luke we have to catch up to Dad and tell him to go ahead of me.

We get to Nathan within a couple minutes. I tell him I fell and got hurt. I get the water bottle to rinse my wound (HUGE mistake) as I rinse it I begin to see just how severe the wound is. I have "flesh flaps", two of them. I start to go into shock. I am sweating profusely and feel dizzy. I sit down for a minute, and tell Nathan it is bad. We agree I have to get back to the car and get to the doctor for stitches. Nathan puts Eison on his back in the Ergo and tries to help me hobble to the car, but within a few steps I see that it isn't going to happen, I start blacking out and tell Nathan as much (he was holding me and I softened my knees so I could crumple to the ground safely). It was only a second that I was out for and I sat/laid for a few minutes with a sick stomach, Nathan tried to encourage me to get up so we could get to the car, but I couldn't. Then I told him I was going to vomit, he told me to move to the side of the trail to do it :) I did scoot a little, and well, I had a berry smoothie that morning and had snacked on some blackberries, so that was a vibrant pink : / (gross, I know!)

After this I decide to send Nathan to get some help, since I don't feel like I can walk. Luke stays with me and Nathan & Eison head off. After just a minute a woman happens by and stops just short of me, she had head phones on and didn't notice me sitting there. She asks if I am okay and I tell her that I am not. She asks what happened, I tell her, and while I tell her another woman stops, she asks if I am okay, I say no and she says "oh" and walks off. Then the first woman says, "well, I just didn't see you there and you surprised me" then leaves. Wow, thanks for nothing folks! After a few more minutes I was feeling better enough to get up and so I called Nathan and told him we were headed his way, he came back to meet us and we made it to the car without further incident.

We dropped Luke off with Lexy and headed to immediate care. I got in quickly, Nathan took Eison to the store so they wouldn't have to wait around forever :). Both nurses and doctor kept asking what I fell onto, it just looked so bad! They wondered if there was a rock or something, but to be honest, I am not sure...I think it was mostly just dirt but with some gravel perhaps? The nurse washed it up a bit before the doctor came in (that hurt a little, but not too bad), then the doctor came in looked at it for a minute and said it would have to be numb before anything else could happen. It took quite a few shots to numb it up, but then the nurse set to scrubbing it out with a tooth brush, (!!) after a little while she decided there wasn't anything more she could do. She was saying that she wasn't sure if what was left was dirt, rocks or just destroyed flesh and skin. The doctor came back (he was SO nice, and had a good sense of humor, I was glad t have him as a doctor:)) said it was good, and then gave me the news that there wasn't enough knee left to really "fix" it back to normal, but he would stitch what he could. He did eight between the two gashes and left drainage spots. I got a tetanus shot (which also has diphtheria and pertussis vaccines in it, yay!), surprisingly the shot spot still hurts more than the knee!

And here are some graphic photos of the knee :)

The arrows are pointing at the "flesh flaps". I could lift those parts open
and see inside, quite deeply. This is after the nurse rinsed my knee off.

This is after the numbing and scrubbing and stiches.

healing

more healing, with stitches still

Shortly before the stitches came out

post stitches

scar