It's been a couple years since my lovely husband has had a hospital-worthy injury. It was high time and he accomplished it. This time he tore his meniscus.
Those words don't really mean anything to you? Me neither. Apparently it's stuff in your knee that keeps your bones from rubbing together. A little more technical jargon: a common injury to the cartilage that stabilizes and cushions the knee joint.
Since Abe is interested in the body, its functions, and ways to repair it naturally, he opted to go with stem cell injections. He went in one day and they withdrew blood from his hip bones. They spun that blood several times to get very concentrated amounts of stem cells.
The next day he went back to get them injected into his knee. I got to come along this day since he took some vicaden to take the edge off. No driving while under the influence of prescribed drugs.
This big arm was an x-ray machine to help the doctor get the injections into the right place.
I got to go in and watch, which was fun. Of course I had to wear an x-ray apron. At least it matched my shirt nicely.
These x-rays mean absolutely nothing to me. The doctor acted like they helped him so we'll go with that.
He had 3 or 4 syringes to inject.
They took more blood when they were done for the next day. They collected the platelets (or maybe this was the stem cells? I can't remember it all) and froze half of them. Freezing them breaks down the outer wall so they would go to work faster. The other half would take 7-10 days to dissolve so they were time-delayed. Cool, huh?
Just a little bitty needle...
apparently it was a little painful. The nurse got him a wet towel.
It's been a week. So far, so good. It seems to be slowing getting better. Recovery will be about 8 weeks. We're praying for good results in the weeks to come.
Hopefully we're good on hospital visits for the next few years!
No comments:
Post a Comment