Today is the day when I was instructed to remove the dressing from the surgical wounds.

Well, I'm up at this ridiculous hour (what else is new?), and I was itching like mad under the ace bandage, so I decided it was time to replace the surgical dressing with band-aids, as per my instructions.

Well... OH, MAN. Was that dressing nasty-looking. Everything's clean and dry, fortunately -- it's not the sort of nasty-looking that heralds any kind of problem. But, well... it was dressing over surgical incisions. Said incisions were stitched nicely closed, but apparently they still had some bleeding left to do between the time the dressing was applied and now. Whew.

Off went the surgical dressing and on went some clean, large knee band-aids, per the doc's instructions. Then I replaced the ace bandage, because frankly the compression does help the knee feel better.

Now I'm sitting and waiting for the knee to calm down after my trip to the bathroom. Even with the crutches, if I'm standing for too long of a time, it starts feeling pretty bad. Once I feel better, I'll go reload the ice pack -- it's down to nothing but cold water now.