DISCLAIMER: I had to delete the Chinese characters from this post because they showed up as question marks.  I’m going to have to figure out later how to get support for Chinese characters.

Somehow we were able to plan our Taiwan trip in order of increasing greatness. If we had seen the sights in any other order I think we would have been disappointed at some point.

So after spending some time in Taipei, we rode a really nice train from Taipei to Hualien which would be our home base for the next two days.

Hualien’s a really laid back vacation town that reminds me a little of Mexico. Everyone’s friendly and there’s a general laziness that can be felt everywhere you go. Hualien is known for their Mochi and their Bian Shi. This photo is at their most famous Bian Shi restaurant. Sorry I didn’t take any photos of the Bian Shi, I was starved by the time they served them and basically inhaled them as fast as I could. It’s basically a really tasty wonton soup dish. I don’t think they serve anything else. The women on the left were folding fresh Bian Shi at lightning speed. As you can see, it was a total hole in the wall. I loved it. I was also introduced to a turkey and rice dish in Hualien which was simple and absolutely delicious but I later ate a perfected version in Chiayi which is famous for its turkey and rice dishes.

There are two major highways along the east coast of Taiwan, Highway 11 and Highway 9. Highway 11 runs along the coast while Highway 9 turns inland through the forest. We drove south on Highway 11 from Hualien and drove back to Hualien on Highway 9. We took a treacherous back road that connected Highway 11 and 9 that was single lane with terrible visibility around the corners of the mountains.

The coolest thing we saw on Highway 11 was Shihtiping (Stone Stair Terrace). It’s basically a “one-kilometer-long stretch of volcanic rock that has been eroded into terraces and other curious formations” (Rough Guide, Taiwan). As you can see, the sky was just about ready to let loose on us.

The second coolest thing I saw that day was a rice paddy. I got out of the car to take this photo. Too bad it started raining so I couldn’t take more.

The next morning we drove north on Highway 9 to Cingshuei Cliffs and saw the ocean like this.

We found a path down from the cliffs to the beach. The water was really clean. I think it was bluer than the water at South Beach in Miami.

So after we saw the cliffs we started driving towards Taroko National Park. At one point I made the husband stop the car because I spotted a running stream along the rocks. I took almost fifty photos here. “It’s so pretty! The water is so blue and clean!” Little did I know what was in store.

Holy smokes. My mouth dropped open when I saw this. And it basically stayed open while I took photos.

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In completely unrelated news, my mother-in-law recently gave me this Estee Lauder travel set that is fancier than anything I have ever put on my face (with the exception of Giorgio Armani’s foundation). I usually use cheap grocery store products like Oil of Olay and Neutrogena. I tried the Estee Lauder Idealist Pore Minimizing Skin Refinisher a few weeks ago and it is amazing. I don’t know how to explain it but it renewed my skin. I couldn’t stop touching my face. It was also a good excuse to use my macro lens. I haven’t had the chance to use it as much as I’d like. I think it’s partly because I’m too lazy to use a tripod for it and that’s how you really get great macro shots.

Here’s a macro shot of the ten pieces of candy our waitress at Kubo’s gave us with our check when she overheard me gushing like a fool about their candy.

And last but not least, here is a photo of the newest addition to our entertainment arsenal. As if we weren’t already completely amused.

My mom cut my hair until I went to college.  And even then, she still cut my hair if I happened to be home when I needed one.  I think that’s why I have such a hard time paying for haircuts.

I cut the husband’s hair about every 3 weeks.  Between haircuts and cooking, that’s how I earn my keep.  Hah, just kidding.

So I’ve been growing my hair out recently and growing out short hair requires a lot of maintenance.  I usually trim it myself but lately I’ve been teaching the husband how to cut it because it’s so much easier for another person to see the back of your head.

Yesterday I asked him to trim the back, which he did very nicely.  When he finished cutting with the normal scissors, I said, “Now blend it by making one high cut all along the edge.”  We have these great thinning scissors that we bought from Sally’s Beauty Supply back in the day when I first started cutting his hair.  So anyway he’s cutting along the edge and when he’s done, I turn to look at him. I see the regular scissors in his hand and the thinning scissors on the bathroom counter.

My eyes grew wide and I said, “Uhhhhh, one high cut WITH THE THINNING SCISSORS!”

We got a huge laugh out of it.  Luckily, he’s a conservative hair cutter so it isn’t too short in the back.  It’ll just set back the growing out process by a little bit.

I like that we cut each other’s hair.  I like to imagine that we’re in the jungle somewhere, taking care of grooming needs on our own.  Well, then I’m snapped back to reality when we put in all of our expensive hair products.

It’s been a frazzled week.  This point was driven home yesterday when I went to pick up the husband’s fifty million button-up long sleeve shirts from his two week business trip and instead of handing the man behind the counter my dry cleaning ticket, I handed him a Popeye’s Chicken & Biscuits (which I love dearly– especially on Tuesdays) receipt.  Confused, he handed me the receipt back and said, “Sorry, this isn’t us.”

All the while his cellphone was going off and his ringtone was none other than the Austin Powers theme song.  That stuff doesn’t come preprogrammed folks.  This guy had to look for the ringtone and download it.

It was a great scene.

She swallows before she begins to speak so that she won’t cry.  The steady rain grows insistent as the wind sweeps the streets.  He laughs nervously at my questions.

Now is not the time to cry.  I don’t even know this person.  Is it because you married outside of your race?  I’m embarrassed to look her in the eye.

I threw up before you guys came.  But I’m okay now.

They leave the television on.  The sound is muted and no one is really watching, but at least we won’t feel so alone.  At least there’s something we can distract ourselves with when we want to look away.

Her bangs are matted down on her forehead.

A place called home.  Somewhere safe.  How it feels to be loved.

The birds are all lined up on the telephone wires.  Or are those electricity poles?

I cut my hand.  Nevermind the cut.

It was all a misunderstanding.

As David Gray belts out, “Remember your soul is the one thing you can’t compromise…” the hunter green Ford Explorer in the lane next to me cuts me off.

“Take my hand, we’re gonna go where we can shine.”

We aren’t planning on having children for another 4-5 years.  I do think it’s weird that we plan that sort of thing when it was never meant to be a planned thing.

Anyway.  Regardless of our plans, I’ve been really baby crazy lately.  For the past month or so (maybe longer) I have at least one baby dream at week.  I have never felt my maternal instinct this strongly before.  It’s bizarre.  I just want to hold babies and cuddle them and it doesn’t help that so many people around me are gestating!

Last night I had my most vivid baby dream.  I had a baby and I remember taking care of it and it was such a good and happy baby.  It was a girl and it looked like me when I was a baby!  Usually I can’t see the baby’s face and that’s usually the husband’s first question when I tell him about the dream: “Did it look like you or did it look like me?”

The reason he asks is because he thinks he was a cuter baby than me.  I think it’s highly debatable.

Can you guess who’s pictured above?

I am really loving the song, “Drivin’ Me Wild” off of Common’s newish CD, Finding Forever, that features UK’s bold and irreverent soundbite queen, Lily Allen.

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In high school our Economics teacher would make us watch videotaped segments of NBC’s The TODAY Show.  I always pictured myself being a grownup, making breakfast and coffee, and watching the TODAY show with my husband before heading off to work.  Since I have been lazily prolonging my jetlag, I woke up at 5 AM this morning and started working on some things.  At around 6:30, I started cooking belgian waffles (complete with powdered sugar and chocolate syrup) and bacon.  At 7:00, the hubby woke up, we had breakfast and I made the offhand remark, “Hey this is like my dream ordinary morning.  To eat breakfast, drink a cup of coffee and watch the TODAY show with my husband.”

“What’s the TODAY show?”

I walked over to the TV and turned on the TODAY show and I am now currently experiencing my storybook morning for the first time.  Sans the coffee.   We NEVER do this.  I love sleeping too much.  I always always always choose sleep over breakfast.

It’s a nice change of pace.

Sunrises are so fleeting.  The husband made a comment about how the sky was pretty from the sunrise and I wanted to take a picture but the waffles were ready and when I sat down again the sunrise was done with.

Yesterday was my first dentist appointment that I can remember in a long time where I didn’t have any cavities!

I hate going to the Dentist.  I never know where to put my eyes when they’re inspecting my mouth and I never know where to put my tongue.  I’m always afraid of accidentally licking the dentist’s hand.  I can’t imagine how awkward that would be.

The Dentist said my teeth are in great shape and that totally made my day.  It feels like the beginning of a school year when you get a clean slate to try to get good grades.  I am totally motivated to use the Water-Pik we have more frequently.

When the hygienist asked me how often I use it I lied and said once a week.  In all actuality, I should be using it every day.

The Dentist also asked how long I’ve been wearing my retainer and I couldn’t bring myself to tell her that I don’t wear it anymore.  I really should.  Especially because I always hear about teeth shifting and reversing the great results from wearing braces.

I really like good teeth.  I think most people that have had braces really value their teeth.

I’ve been eying a pair of wing chairs on Craigslist for a few days now and we finally went to check them out tonight. I really like wing chairs. And the pair we saw tonight was irresistible. We brought both of them home with us for the ridiculous price of twenty bucks each. The picture above is of one of the chairs now sitting in our living room.

It’s such a great feeling to find a good steal of a deal on Craigslist.

But really, the fun part was meeting the seller. The husband said he sounded like a dud over the phone and was unenthusiastic so I didn’t know what to expect. It’s always a bit of a rush to meet your Craigslist seller. There’s always an element of danger as you pull up to their house and find out if the seller is a chainsaw murderer or a hippie artist.

Thankfully, we got the latter tonight.

He had long stringy brown hair and a matching goatee. He wore a loose fitting button up shirt with only a few buttons in use and a green and white ceramic medallion on a black leather necklace. He opened his garage and showed us his laptop on which he said he liked watching in lieu of watching TV. I noticed the inside of his garage had a life-size tree painted in one of the corners.

He talked a lot about how much he liked the wing chairs and that he’s painted them 4 or 5 times depending on the color of the room he had them in. He talked about how Craigslist has really helped him sell quite a bit of his furniture and how he’s moving to Florida to be with his aging mom. He also talked about how he likes to watch home improvement shows and gets a lot of his decorating ideas from them. He mentioned that he painted these wing chairs white because he has a room that he painted dark blue and every other bit of furniture in the room was white — including the bed, the linens and the tables and chairs. I wish he would have invited us to see the inside of his house.

Then he started talking about how he really wants to live green and it’s hard to do that in Houston. We were in Mission Bend. Yeah. I’m not sure how he ended up in suburbia.

After we paid for the chairs (which is awkward because with Craigslist you approach the whole thing like you’re pals and then you pull out the cash) he helped us move the chairs which barely fit in the back of the 4runner. That’s when we started discussing future plans and he said he’s always dreamed of building his own house. A hay bale house, to be specific.

A what?

Hay bale house. You know, hay bales? The ones that you use to feed horses? You take a bunch of them and use them like building blocks to put your house together. Then you use rebar to anchor them together. Then you get this plaster that seals the house and there you go. Energy efficient and eco-friendly!

We wrapped things up and headed out with our precious white cargo in the back. What a fun night.

And yeah, I came home and looked up the hay bale house. It’s actually the real deal. Check it out on wikipedia!

We also visited two newborn babies tonight! So cute! I absolutely loved holding them. Can’t wait to have our own.

I contemplated writing this kind of a post a few weeks ago when my one year wedding anniversary rolled around. But I considered my readers, I really did, and realized there isn’t really an interest in this part of my life.

So then I wrote about buying a car instead and posted pictures of the new 2008 Honda Accord Coupe. Go figure. I’m not sure if there was much interest in that either.

As I’m debating whether to eat my fourth blueberry muffin within a span of eleven hours, I have completely run out of self-control (obviously) and I am going to write what I’ve been wanting to write.

Reader, you may now respectfully click on to another blog. I write the following for my own pleasure.

I’m lucky. I’ve always known this. I’m not talking about the lottery kind of luck, in fact I never win raffles and I’ve never gotten BINGO in my entire life. Not even in second grade when we used squares of construction paper to cover up our BINGO boards. The luck I’m talking about is the kind that has to do with finding your soulmate. Not that there’s necessarily one person that’s only made for one other person, but when I say soulmate, I mean that when you find someone and you fall in love with that person and it certainly feels like they were made for you and you for that person. It feels like your bodies were meant to fit together– the nook between his chin and his shoulder is strangely the perfect size for you to snuggle your head into. All those cheesy poems start making so much sense. Like puzzle pieces fitting together.

Well, except for our hands. I have tiny hands that are comically disproportionate to my height and he has large hands that stretch my fingers apart so widely that sometimes we take hand-holding breaks. But even then, the sheer ridiculous nature of that seems right. That it was an intentional design, to add very ordinary humor into our romance.

And when I say “luck,” I use the term pretty loosely. My older sister generally dislikes the use of the word luck because she feels it suggests a lack of predestination, a lack of fate, and a lack of God’s hand in everything. I believe in the same destiny theories as she does, and I believe that God orchestrates the majority of our lives. But I’m reluctant to omit the word “luck” from my vocabulary because I think it evokes a sense of giddiness. Of pure glee. That for some reason or another, you were fortunate enough to get something that your neighbor was unable to get.

I imagine every happy couple believes that their love for each other is unrivaled by any other couples in the universe. Not even the freaky alien couples that might exist out there. I’m no exception. I honestly think that we know love better than everybody else. Is this conceit? Perhaps. But it’s blissful conceit.

Our relationship fascinates me. It really does. And I think that’s a hallmark of true love. I think true love is associated with a degree of fanatical obsession. I think that’s why so many people go crazy. You’re borderline crazy when you’re in love.

I don’t understand how love can be mild and mediocre. I don’t understand it when people need a break from their lover. When I was in a long distance relationship with the husband, so many people told me that it would get better over time– that I would get used to it. I wanted to tell them that I never wanted to get used to being apart from him. That if I were able to get over being away from him– it would be one of the greatest tragedies I had ever encountered.

Our relationship is hilarious. We always have these ongoing contests and a lot of times we’re childish, daring the other person to be more spontaneous and more outrageous.

Our conversations are provocative. We discuss technology, business, sports, science, and spirituality with the dedication of doctorate students preparing a thesis on each subject. We create exercises and debates for ourselves and research facts to support our arguments. I’m learning in my relationship.

And our sex life? Just kidding, I won’t go there.

Oh, and did I mention? The husband bakes. He bakes delicious turtle brownies and last night he baked the world’s best blueberry & walnut muffins using the Amish Friendship Bread starter that we got from a good friend of ours.

See? I told you I’m lucky.

I’ll admit. I’m pretty disappointed that Britney didn’t shock us and make a jaw-dropping comeback at the VMA’s.  You can see her performance here.

The MFAH members’ night was pretty cool.  It’s a really nice perk for becoming a museum member.  Some of the older crowd that was there was getting pretty toasted.  The husband suspects that this is what older people do in lieu of clubbing or bar hopping.  Grapes, cheese, and wine.  It’s free after all!

I really don’t appreciate Impressionist paintings.  For me, the more realistic the painting is, the more impressive it is.  I do realize that it’s a pretty uneducated perspective but I’m certainly not well versed in art museums.  What I really enjoy is the Baroque paintings that show a biblical scene or a mythological scene.  Those are my favorite paintings to look at.  Maybe this will change over time.

The museum currently has a really small wall of WWII photos up and that was probably the highlight of the tour for me.

After the members party, we stopped at Inversion Coffee (mostly out of curiosity) to get a quick sugar/caffeine fix and had a good time there.  Take a break from Starbucks and give it a try!  I think it’s relatively new so it wasn’t too overcrowded yet.  The cranberry scone I had with my coffee was pretty great.

Here’s an obvious statement: Graduate school is very different from undergraduate school.

I think the most radically different aspect is the attitude of your classmates.  No one is there just because it’s the next step the way people went to college after high school.  Many people are juggling jobs, children, and school simultaneously.  For most, the decision to come back was a financially difficult decision.  So there we all are, 140-some odd students (in my program), who are all there for different reasons perhaps, but all very compelling reasons.

The age range of the students in my program is pretty wide– 21 to 62.  The backgrounds vary but mostly center around humanities, sociology, and psychology.  I am considered an outlier with my business background.  I find camaraderie with this woman I met yesterday who is a lawyer.

The variety of the class provides for good discussion and viewpoints.  It can also be frustrating at times.  I find myself growing impatient with people who flaunt their psychology knowledge or their years of experience in the field.  Particularly in the field of social work, people’s opinions are strong and unwavering on most issues.  This is unsettling to me because I think most social issues are incredibly complex and cannot be simplified and reduced to a few sentences of generalization.  I have to constantly resist the urge to always seek the most efficient response or process– years of business lectures being undone.

I certainly have a lot to learn.  I feel completely unprepared and behind the game but it’s fantastic.  I like having an entire field of study that is now open for me to dive into.  I know this is going to push me and I’m pretty excited about it.  I know there will be an adjustment period as I evaluate what I know and what I don’t know and what I believe and what I don’t believe.

I also like how the professors emphasize a balanced perspective on social and economic justice issues.  Social workers usually get a bad reputation for placing too much emphasis on society’s responsibilities and neglecting the individual’s responsibilities (read: thinking too “liberal” or too “left”) but in reality, social workers actually fall less to the left than you think.  There is a strong sense of self-determination and empowerment that is impressed on us to pass on to our clients and patients.  To be honest, this is a relief for me.

I’ve definitely become a lot nerdier.  I sit in the front of the class, I take tedious notes, I don’t surf the internet, I don’t practice writing with my left hand and I don’t daydream during class.  To those of you who have ever had a class with me, you know this is a drastic shift for me.

The thing is, I know that graduate school is a privilege and I don’t want to have any regrets at the end of these two years.  Thanks to everyone who has helped me get this far and has put in encouraging words about my aspirations.

After spending a ridiculous amount of time trying to get the SimpleViewer wordpress plugin to work, I finally got it to work.

And then I decided I didn’t like it. I also didn’t like how I had to turn off Ajax to make it work.

So I decided to use AutoViewer, also written by the Airtight Interactive genius, Felix Turner.

Please click on the ‘PHOTOS‘ button on the top navigation to take a look. It’s gorgeous. The flash is so gorgeous that it makes the rest of sockparade look adolescently ugly. Sigh.

In other news, I cut my bangs and decided to thin my hair a bit. It turned out pretty well except for this one part where I messed up in a severe way. I basically have the beginnings of a mullet. The husband spotted it in two seconds but immediately reassured me that it’s not noticeable.

If you can’t see it, I’m not telling you where it is. Good thing my hair grows fast.

I’ve been putting off sending in my 18-200 VR lens and this afternoon I finally got around to packing it up. BUT, before I packed it for shipping, I put it on my camera body to test it one last time. Amazingly, it worked! No VR problems, no funny noises. It was back to normal! Admittedly, it makes me a little uneasy because the problem might resurface, but since I know it has a 5 year warranty, I’m not too concerned. I’m just relieved I don’t have to send it in again. It’s nerve racking to wait for a lens that’s being shipped to a repair facility that doesn’t communicate with you.

You’re probably tired of reading about the husband’s ACL surgery but honestly it’s pretty much consumed our lives. Until he gets his stitches removed (we’re keeping our fingers crossed for this Friday), he can’t get his wounds wet. This presents a problem when it comes to bath-time. He also can’t put any weight on his left leg for a month and he has to keep it locked straight except when he’s doing his physical therapy.  That rules out standing (his right leg gets too tired) and rules out sitting at the edge of the tub or the bottom of the tub with his leg out.  I was also trying to find a solution that wouldn’t involve getting water all over the bathroom floor.  I went to the BigLots near our house and walked from aisle to aisle looking for a good solution. This is what I came up with:

Beach chairs were on sale for $12! The cashier asked me if I was going to the beach. Hah.

(The photo above was actually taken by my fully recovered VR lens!)

Oh, and of course, here are some post-op pictures of the husband’s knee:

I think it’s really impressive how small the incision is. They managed to trim the meniscus, put two stitches in the meniscus, get a graft from the hamstring, and drill a hole to attach the hamstring graft in his knee– all through the same hole.  I also like how they marked up the knee with lines, dots, and x’s like they were drawing up a football play.

The two holes on top of the knee are where they put the cameras in. Pretty cool, huh? Oh, and you can also see where they shaved his leg. It’s slowly growing back. I can’t stand it when men don’t have hairy legs.

I’m not a Michael Moore fan.

I find him mostly obnoxious with a few good arguments. I think that his abrasive personality overshadows his intentions and distracts from his purpose. However, I’ll admit, I’m intrigued by his most recent movie, Sicko. It’s definitely on my to-watch list. Having lived in the United States my whole life, I know no other health care system than the one we currently use. As long as I’ve understood health insurance, I’ve known about in-network providers and out-of-network providers. When I got my first job, I chose the health insurance plan with the highest deductible ($5,000) so that I would have the lowest monthly premium. It is beyond my comprehension that there are some countries in which you can walk into any hospital and receive treatment.

Take Canada for example. Here’s a description from a Canadian Health Care website:

“Canada’s health care system is a group of socialized health insurance plans that provides coverage to all Canadian citizens. It is publicly funded and administered on a provincial or territorial basis, within guidelines set by the federal government.

Under the health care system, individual citizens are provided preventative care and medical treatments from primary care physicians as well as access to hospitals, dental surgery and additional medical services. With a few exceptions, all citizens qualify for health coverage regardless of medical history, personal income, or standard of living.”

The most amazing part of the husband’s recent ACL and meniscus reconstruction surgery was that we didn’t have to pay a dime. His company’s health insurance plan is absolutely incredible. When we first got married and I switched over to his plan, I didn’t believe him when he said he didn’t pay a monthly premium. When he showed me his paystub, I then quickly assumed that his coverage must be lousy. As it turned out, it was actually a lot better than mine. At the time, this was most evident in prescription medicine. On my health insurance plan, I was paying $30 per pack of birth control pills. On his health insurance plan, I now pay $40 for 3 packs of birth control pills. And they conveniently mail it to my door through Express Scripts.

I don’t think we fully grasped how good the insurance coverage was until we decided to get the ACL and meniscus surgery and started looking at prices.

eMedicine.com says, “The average cost for surgical repair of an ACL tear is approximately $11,500.”

I’ve Googled and looked everywhere for different price quotes and it varies pretty widely because I don’t think there are price controls on ACL surgeries but the quote above is about the median if not a little lower that what I’ve found.

Ever since the night of the surgery, the medical supply companies keep calling to drop off a continuous passive motion (CPM) machine (pictured above). It basically helps keep your knee in motion by bending and unbending your knee continuously. It’s also covered by our insurance plan and it retails as several thousand dollars.

We didn’t even pay a co-pay for the doctor office visits or the hinged knee brace which is also another few hundred dollars or so.

I don’t know what we would do if we didn’t have health insurance. I can’t imagine living in the United States without health insurance. It would be a complete nightmare– which I think is what Michael Moore’s movie is trying to demonstrate.

(photo taken from National Geographic)

Team Seiko is D.C. bound for Labor Day Weekend! (Let’s hope the husband is off of his crutches by then.)

What are your Labor Day plans?

There’s the husband after pre-op while waiting for the surgeon to get there.  They actually initiated the femoral & sciatic nerve block on him while he was still awake (which according to the anesthesiologist is unorthodox) and when he described the whole process to me, I was thoroughly disturbed.  They basically run electric currents through your muscles which make them twitch to identify them and then shoot them up with anesthetic.

The husband just glanced over at my computer screen and is protesting that I am robbing him of his dignity by posting the photo above.  Tough luck, babe.

Personally, I think he looks like he’s about to serve lasagna in a high school cafeteria with his shower cap (hairnet) and all.

We (I mean he) is doped up on his pain meds most of the day so we do a lot of sleeping.  I don’t really have a reason to be sleepy but I don’t seem to have any trouble falling asleep.

I was tempted to title this post “The Bee’s Knees.”

I’ve never broken a bone and my tonsils and appendix are intact (unlike Greg Oden) so that means I’ve never been to the hospital for any major repairs. Well, not unless you count my two bouts of bronchitis and also the time when I was an infant and I had a bad cold and they had to stick a needle into my forehead (according to my mom).

I have a ton of other things I wanted to post about today (Judy’s wedding weekend, Tim Donaghy, Michael Vick and 802.11n draft specs among other topics) but with the husband’s ACL surgery coming up on Thursday, it seems like an ACL post is most warranted.

About a month ago, after a much overdue MRI, the husband was diagnosed with a completely torn ACL and a partially torn meniscus. Not wanting to damage the meniscus any more than he already had, he stopped playing basketball and tennis cold turkey and started weighing his surgical options.

There are generally 3 surgical options to consider when reconstructing an ACL:

1. Patellar tendon graft — The patellar tendon is the structure on the front of your knee that connects the kneecap (patella) to the shin bone (tibia).  The patellar tendon averages between 25 to 30 mm in width. When a patellar tendon graft is taken, the central 1/3 of the patellar tendon is removed (about 9 or 10 mm) along with a block of bone at the sites of attachment on the kneecap and tibia.

• PROS
  • Longer history of successful results
  • Better stability, which may be preferable for serious athletes
  • Shorter rehab time
• CONS
  • Anterior knee pain, kneeling may be painful
  • Postoperative quadriceps weakness
  • Too tight a graft may also lead to arthritis in the long term

2. Hamstring tendon graft — The hamstring muscles are the group of muscles on the back of your thigh. When the hamstring tendons are used in ACL surgery, two of the tendons of these muscles are removed, and “bundled” together to create a new ACL.

• PROS
  • Less anterior knee pain
  • Initial postoperative period is often easier and more comfortable with this graft choice
  • Less initial quadriceps atrophy
• CONS
  • Postoperative hamstring weakness

3. Allograft — Donor tissue is taken from a cadaver.  This option is most commonly used in lower demand patients, or patients who are undergoing revision ACL surgery (when an ACL reconstruction fails).

• PROS
  • Recovery from surgery is usually easier, faster and less painful
• CONS
  • The process of graft preparation (freeze-drying), kills the living cells, and decreases the strength of the tissue
  • Possible disease transmission
  • The creepy factor

We’ve decided to go with option #2, the hamstring tendon graft. While it may take a bit longer to rehabilitate, the ability to kneel without pain is pretty important to him. The doctor is also performing a partial meniscectomy which means he is trimming/smoothing the torn meniscus.

The surgery is scheduled for this Thursday and I’m nervous as heck but he’s cool as a cucumber.

So now you know.

REFERENCES:

Mayo Clinic - ACL

Anterior Cruciate Ligament (ACL) Graft Options by F. Lincoln Avery, M.D.

ACL Graft Choice by Jonathan Cluett, M.D.