Bad Idea

The saga of my knee, Part II

It had been three weeks since I hurt my knee. It was still sore, but I could put weight on it and walk mostly normal. I bought a brace like the doctor had said and figured I was good to go. Clearly the brace made me invincible!

So, I ventured out on to the Ultimate Frisbee field again.

The first game went alright. I wasn't exerting myself too much, but I could run, everything seemed to be well on its way to healing. Now and then my knee felt a little loose and unstable, but I was sure that would go away in time. I was back!

The next week was the playoffs. There'd be none of that namby pamby not exerting myself this time! I was, after all, back, I felt (mostly) good, and I wanted to win!

At this point I'm sure that everyone reading this know roughly what's going to happen next. If any of you have access to a time machine or temporal displacement device of some kind, would you mind traveling back and warning me? I'd really appreciate it. Thanks.

I played for a short while without incident. I don't remember what the score was or anything beyond the fact that someone had thrown a pass that was skimming the ground just ahead of me. I planted my left foot, put all my weight on it and lunged forward to catch the disc.

My knee buckled under the strain. I collapsed to the ground (again) and swore very loudly (again).

I hobbled to the sidelines and had a seat. Someone from the other team offered me a cold beer. I'm somewhat of a beer snob and normally don't think much of the brand I'd been offered, in this case I accepted it and was enormously grateful.

I grabbed my phone, explained my plight to Devilboy and asked if it was at all possible for him to come get me in my car.

"Dumbass" He said.
(Ok, whoever went back in time, you told the wrong person. Thanks for the effort anyway, though)

The field we'd been playing on was behind a school in the middle of a oval shaped running track. Part of the track ran close to the parking lot with only a thin strip of grass separating them. When Devilboy arrived he ran over that thin strip, and drove my car around the running track to get me. It was a pretty amusing sight, and I was really happy I wouldn't have to hobble any further than necessary.

Before this all started I hadn't had a doctor in Toronto. After my visit to the ER, I decided that I really ought to have one, and I also ought to have someone else look at my knee. Just to be absolutely sure. After eventually finding a doctor who was accepting new patients I'd made an appointment. That appointment was two days after the second falling down and swearing incident, so not being anxious to spend another evening in the waiting room, I opted to just gut it out for a couple days and wait for my new doctor to fix it.

The next couple of days passed slowly. I was back on my crutches again and generally displeases with the turn my life had taken. Finally, the day arrived. Surely the doctor would fix me! All would soon be well!

Not so much. Since this was my first appointment with her, my doctor wanted to do a full physical and get x-rays done before really dealing with my knee. I was poked and pricked and went through all the routine things one does for a physical, but was not a lot closer to having my knee fixed. My next appointment was in a few weeks. In the meantime I was supposed to get some x-rays of my knee taken.

The x-ray clinic my new doctor used did both mammograms and x-rays. There weren't a lot of men in the place. The woman who took the x-rays was either having a bad day, or just really didn't like men. I couldn't tell. Never in my life, though, have I felt more like a piece of meat.

I brought my set of x-rays with me to my next doctors appointment. I'd spent some time analyzing them myself and was confident I'd found the problem. I handed them to my doctor and waited for her to confirm my diagnosis. She only needed to look at them for a split second.

"Those are fine" she said.

She wiggled my knee, tested the range of motion and determined that there was definitely something wrong with it, though.

But it was not something she could fix.

She referred me to a joint specialist and instructed me to call his office to make an appointment.

I did so.

More weeks passed. I'd been limping for so long that my shoes had developed an irregular wear pattern.

Finally, the day of my appointment with the specialist came. This was clearly the day! I would go to sleep tonight without pain in my leg! Joy!

Ummm... No.

The specialist poked and prodded my knee. Asked if it hurt when he poked various places around it. I'd seen this show before.

The specialist told me I had two choice. An MRI, which would take months to schedule, and then weeks to schedule an operation if it was needed, or arthroscopic surgery, it had less of a wait, and he could likely fix whatever was wrong while he was in there.

I went with the surgery. My appointment was scheduled for September 30th. I'd hurt myself sometime in early June.

Tomorrow (or possibly Monday as I'm going to Lexington for the weekend) Part III: CanadaDave goes under the knife.