Updates on Louis' knee

We went back to the doctor yesterday for his routine weekly check-up until the operation, which is likely to take place just before the CNY.

Met up with Eileen for lunch since her office is just opposite Raffles Hospital. On our way up to the clinic after lunch, we met a doctor in the lift who enquired about how Louis sustained his knee injury. He was a little surprised that he hurt it while playing badminton, instead of contact sports as he had originally thought.

As we split off in different directions on the same floor, the doctor casually asked if I was Louis' sister, cos he said we looked very alike. Hahaha... :)

This week, his swelling is still present although it has gone down quite a bit. There's still some discoloration around the knob of his left ankle, which was to be expected.

His doctor did a check on his knee before he started to explained a little about the upcoming surgery.

Technically, Louis is medically known to have dislocated his knee, as more than 2 of his ligaments were torn (he torn 3). In most cases, people would only have torn either the ACL or PCL. In such situations, the doctors would typically extract a tendon from the other uninjured knee area to help join the torn ligament together during the operation.

Louis, unfortunately torn both ligaments, making it insufficient to rely on extracting his own tendon to aid in the repair. Hence,his doctor shared that when the time for surgery comes, he would be ordering in tendons from the US. I had to ask him somewhat incredulously if that meant that the tendons were from human beings. His reply was that it was, but these donors were "no longer living". However, he went on to assured us that there is strict quality controls, processes and protocols to ensure these harvested tendons are safe and legal for use.

I had mixed reactions hearing that cos there might be complications arising from the use of these tendons. On the other hand, it beats extracting it from Louis' other knee area cos if it required surgery to extract it, wouldn't he be wheelchair-bound after the op??!!

Anyways, the doctor again assured us that there is very little risk of rejection from donated tendons (0.1%), but he said there would definitely be reactions to these tendons. It could be swelling or in worse situations, there might be pus, which would require some extraction through injection of sorts.

We jokingly asked if he was trying to protect us by spreading the series of bad news over the weeks instead of telling it to us all in one time. He was somewhat amused and laughed. But he felt that if he were to share everything with us, it would be too much for us to absorb. Well... he certainly has a good point there.

At next week's appointment, he would share more with us about possible complications arising from the surgery.

Its expected that post-op, Louis would still be on crutches for another 4 weeks, before he can slowly start to put some weight on his left leg towards the 5th and 6th week. It would be a good six months before he could run, and is encouraged to pursue straight-line sports e.g. swimming, jogging etc versus sports that requires the knees to have sudden lateral movements in the future.

I was asking the doctor if the injury was partly due to normal wear and tear over the years, instead of the one-off injury. His assessment was that it was a one-off accident and that Louis might have landed rather awkwardly to injury his knee so badly. In the doctor's own words, he said, "Its the worst badminton injury that I've come across. In fact, it is like a traffic accident injury."

I didn't know whether I should laugh or cry upon hearing that. Sigh...