My Story - The 1st Knee Surgery 

 I wanted to share how arthrofibrosis has changed my life. I originally injured my knee April 6th of 2020. My injury did not occur at work, and I had only been employed by Chipotle for 65 days. Unfortunately to get benefits with my job, you had to be employed for 90 days. Due to covid restrictions my surgery was put off until May 28th. In the meantime I was instructed by my doctor to do physical therapy to get as much range of motion before the surgery as possible. 

After my surgery Dr. Lavender came to me to let me know that when he got inside my knee, not only did I have cartilage torn, and floating pieces that had solidified over the years, but that I had severe bone damage in my knee joint as well, and he had to do a bone graft, and use a screw to hold my cadaver of cartilage in place. As my doctor and I talked before the cartilage reconstruction surgery,  I was under the assumption that I would return to work in 15 weeks at the most. Unfortunately, that was not the case. Six weeks out of my surgery I was only 55 degrees on a bend (angle of knee flexion). I was experiencing severe pain, more than what my doctor considered normal for my type of procedure. At this point Dr. Lavender said I should have been at 90 degrees, and I was only at 55 degrees,  and I was having severe pain, to the point I was only sleeping, or nodding out, for about 20 minutes at a time. The pain medicine was not helping, and was making me dizzy, but unfortunately due to new restrictions on medication my doctor was not able to try anything else. I literally suffered. It has been described by other patients as being worse than giving birth, although It last a lot longer. I was also experiencing numb spots, from nerve damage. After my doctor refused to give me anything else I turned to edibles to help me through. I was only getting 20 minutes of sleep at a time, and edibles help me sleep through the pain for at least a few hours.