So it's now ten weeks since I had my gall bladder removed and five weeks since my knee surgery and things are improving (very) slowly but I'm still having a lot of difficulty.
Today I went for an abdominal MRI scan to find out why I am still having a lot of pain from where my gall bladder was as well as why I am still having minor biliary colic attacks (the type of pain I had in the first place leading to the removal of my gall bladder). As I think I may have mentioned in my last post my GP seems to think it is possible that a stone is still in my system somewhere. Last week I also had bloods taken and so now I am playing a waiting game for my results for these and my MRI scan to come back. Depending on what these show up I may need an endoscopy (camera down the throat) to check for other things. I am seriously hoping the answer lies in the MRI/bloods so I don't have to have that done. It could be that I'm just healing really slowly, perhaps due to my body being put through two ops, maybe due to my M.E. but hopefully I will have some answers soon.
As for me knee it seems to be making some progress now. I can finally walk down the stairs normally after over a year, although there is still a bit of clicking. Today I walked round a shop for ten minutes without my crutches (although I did nearly stumble over a few times and was ready for crawling to the car by the end). There is still swelling, one of my scars randomly itches or burns quite often and is still really red and blistery looking and my knee tends to lock up now and again. I have two main problems that are hindering the recovery of my knee. One is that the muscles around the knee have weakened and despite doing the exercises I have been given and trying to walk around as much as I can physically manage (and sometimes pushing it a bit too much) they don't seem to be strengthening as quickly as I would have hoped. One of the symptoms of M.E. is muscle weakness so I think it's going to take a little more time than the average person would experience. The other issue is that I have hypermobility (double jointed). My knee wants to push back instead of bending when I walk and because the aforementioned muscles are weak there is nothing preventing this from happening. I have to make a conscious effort to bend my knee when walking. It all gets really painful really quickly.
As for my M.E. I feel the surgeries have had an impact on it but I think I have done all I can to limit the amount it has hindered my recovery. So far I have prevented a full relapse which could have so easily happened and was my biggest fear. I'm desperately trying to manage my activity/rest in a way that benefits all of my conditions and recoveries, sometimes I have got it seriously wrong and totally overdone things and have fallen into the Boom and Bust trap. But I am determined to get myself well as soon as I can so I can get back to some normality and get back to work and be able to go places and do things and hopefully be able to enjoy a bit of the summer after what has been a crap year so far.
One positive thing at the moment is my physiotherapy. I was referred once before for physio on my back and it was useless. When I was around 11 I damaged my coccyx (the small bone at the bottom of the spine) and it has been agony ever since to the point that if I'm not on strong anti-inflammatory meds I can barely walk after a shift at work. This time around I'm having my physio at the hospital and so far it has been great. I had a consultation and one session of acupuncture prior to my operations and over the last two weeks managed to have two more. I noticed the biggest difference last week after he increased the number of needles and the area he covered. I had been led on my side as I couldn't manage to lie on my front and the side he treated was so much better than the side he didn't, so this week he tried deeper needles and more of them again across both sides of my back. It is certainly helping although I can still feel a lot of tension in the muscles. We are going to continue with the acupuncture and once I am recovered from my surgeries I can start hydrotherapy which should be good as I have absolutely no strength in my core muscles but standard exercise would be too much for my M.E. at this time and also hydrotherapy will have less impact on my hypermobile joints.
So positives and negatives at the moment. I can see light at the end of the tunnel but I just can't judge how far away that light is and how long it will take me to reach it.
xx
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