Kaite is home and resting, with her leg elevated and iced, doing exercises every TV commercial (she is NOT allowed to fast forward through the TIVO’d ads!). For the next 48 hours, that is the prescribed treatment.

She had a plica band which was causing the majority of the pain. A plica is a band of dense scar-like tissue that occurs normally in many people. It is left over tissue from when the knee was developing prior to birth. We always knew she had a little something special! This was removed since it’s location was preventing her knee cap from doing it’s thing. Since the plica band had acted up, the IT band (a group of fibers that run up the outside of the thigh) had positioned itself so that it was pushing her knee cap out of position. This was surgically released to allow the knee cap to re-align itself correctly. Which should allow her ankle, knee and hip joints to re-align eventually. She was great and really held it together throughout. I am so proud of her — and she did far better than I ever would have done (I’m such a baby about such things).

She has pain meds for as long as needed, has crutches for as long as needed, but has already put weight on the leg. She will have physical therapy tomorrow (Friday) morning and will keep up with that for another 6 weeks or so to re-build the muscles again. The bandage comes off either tomorrow or Saturday and then she can hop in the shower – she seems opposed to the yellow of the Betadine as an accessory color!

There are no stitches. It is an amazing thing.