My Life With Niall - The Long Recovery

New Beginnings Part 1

July 25, 2017

(Suri's Point of View)

I woke up this morning and the sun was peaking through the curtain. I turned over to see my handsome boyfriend sound asleep. I can't even remember the last time that we have both been in the same place at 10:00 in the morning. I am looking forward to spending more time with him since a few days ago we wrapped filming for a movie a few days ago in Spain and we have some work to do in LA before we prepare for the launch of a few singles followed by a new album. Tomorrow we are leaving bright and early for Chicago because Niall has a series of interviews for his new song Slow Hands and then we are heading to NYC for a few more interviews. Today we have a relatively relaxed day except Niall has a doctors appointment for his knee, I have an interview with James Cordon tonight and a meeting this afternoon and we have to pack but other than that we will be just lounging around all day. I can't help but look at my sleeping Irish prince, because with all of the struggles with his knee we don't always sleep in the same bed because of his discomfort, pain, stiffness, swelling, muscle spasms, and constantly being awake and we are frequently not in the same location. He begins to stir but just moves a bit to get more comfortable except when he moves his leg which is elevated on pillows falls down causing him to say "ooowwww oooowwww owwww my leg" but he never opens his eyes and off he goes back into his little world of sleep. However, immediately his monitors in the room blink red, which I have learned means something is not quite right, but usually once he settles down again the blinking stops. I am on my side looking at my email as he is settling into his new position I feel something hard rub rub against my leg and at first I am unsure what it is so I turn over and I notice it's Niall's left leg which is in his normal brace that he uses at night. I take a look at it for a second because his poor knee has been operated on so many times in the past couple years. Currently his knee just has its usual gauze, bandage, brace and game ready and he is connected to a draining tube and he has a monitor on his foot to monitor blood flow and it looks like he has some medication also connected to his leg and he is on a little bit of oxygen. He has a lot of noticeable swelling and a pretty large bruise which he told me was from a few days ago while I was still in Spain he took a bit of a spill on his knee. I figure he probably won't be up for a while so I decided to get out of bed. I walk into the closet and get on my gym clothes and I head downstairs to get my morning workout in. Now that I am home I am going to try and establish a routine and I am hoping to get up every morning and workout for a little while. I begin on the treadmill and decided I will do sprint intervals for about 5 miles worth of running in the pattern of about 1 minute on for a hard sprint one minute jog for a recovery.

(Niall's Point of View)

When I wake up it is sunny and pretty warm in our room. I notice Suri is not in bed so I look at my clock and I realize it's 10:45. I can't believe I have slept this late, I usually get up pretty early because I have been really busy but I guess I needed the sleep. I then sit up and I check on my gammy knee, it feels like it usually does in the morning: it hurts, it's really tender, sore, swollen and stiff but that is nothing new. I actually slept pretty well last night which is good because I can't remember the last time I actually slept decently since my original surgery because of the pain and discomfort at night. I still have a really long way to go with the knee but being able to sleep more than about an hour to an hour and a half at a time at night is encouraging. Today I have my seven month appointment with Dr. Lee today to check the progress of my knee and how the cartilage, tendons, ligaments, bone and hardware are healing. In the last week I have been able to sleep longer periods of time which provides better quality of sleep which has been really nice. Some things have not changed with my knee through. Jacob still lives with us, I still have PT with Mark, my knee is still in a brace 24/7, I am still on a lot of medications for my knee, it still hurts constantly and is very tender and sore, I am still really swollen, I still have a terribly bad limp,I still have very limited ROM, I have lost 99% of my muscle in my left leg, my brace and hardware make up 100% of my leg function, I still have gauze on my knee for a multitude of reasons including: my scar is really sensitive and anything that touches it hurts and irritates so the gauze protects it, when I am swollen I still secrete fluid from my scar, my incision area is itchy so covering the scar keeps me from scratching it and it keeps the sun from damaging the tissue more than it is already, I am on oxygen most nights to help with sleep quality, I have a monitor on my foot to monitor blood flow and I also still use a draining tube and line for medications. However, all things considered I feel like I am doing pretty well. When I am ready to get up I call for Jacob who comes and checks up on me and gives my injection to help with the new cartilage transplant from my osteochondral allograft resurfacing surgery which was part of my major surgery at the beginning of this along with another Fulkerson's Osteotomy to realign my knee again and a full reconstruction of my ACL and MCL along with my Patellar tendon and LCL getting some repairs done too. On top of that I have a few stress fractures around my knee which also got repaired and I had a micro fracture surgery.