My Journey with Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome

"On the girl's brown legs there were many small white scars. I was thinking, do those scars cover the whole of you, like the stars and the moons on your dress? I thought that would be pretty too, and I ask you right here please to agree with me that a scar is never ugly. That is what the scar makers want us to think. But you and I, we must make an agreement to defy them. We must see all scars as beauty. Okay? This will be our secret. Because take it from me, a scar does not form on the dying. A scar means, I survived."

- Little Bee by Chris Cleave

Monday, February 28, 2011

What Happened in Surgery

Going into surgery we knew there were three possible reconstructions that I would need, but my surgeon didn't know what he would do exactly until I was in surgery. He ended up doing all three reconstructions.

The first, which he was pretty sure he was going to do, MPFL replacement. My medial patella femoral ligament was replaced with a cadaver tendon.



The second, osteotomy of the tibia. The goal of this is to deepen the grove that the patella (kneecap) sits in. This can be done without using bone to build up the grove, in those cases a wedge is used to build up the grove instead. On my left knee (December 2009) my surgeon used a wedge, but for this knee he used my bone of my tibia to build up the grove.

The third, adjustment of the Q-Angle. The Q-Angle is the angle between the tibial tubercle (right under the kneecap on the tibia) to the middle of the patella and the middle of the patella to the ASIS (hip)

The Q-Angle:



The Surgical Fix:

Posted by at

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)