The Knee's the Thing
Well, it looks like I'm done for a while.
Don't get excited. I'm not done blogging (much to your chagrin, I'm sure). I'm just done being active for a while. I'm going to be sitting on my ass for a couple months.
See, the infrequent posts on this blog are not necessarily an indication of any intellectual bankruptcy on my part, though one could argue that I indeed suffer from such an affliction. No, the infrequent posts are due more to the fact that I like playing outside. Without fail, I will forgo sitting at my computer to enjoy a game of beach volleyball, or to go catch a wave or two, or to go for a run at the park, or to generally do anything that keeps me moving and in shape.
But now, because of an issue with my right knee, I'm going to be done with all that physical activity for a while.
Just to bore you with the particulars:
Recently, while playing volleyball I began experiencing some pain and swelling in my knee that adversely affected my game. And just to be clear, when I say swelling, I don't mean just a little puffiness. Oh, would that I did. It looked like I had a cooked ham strapped to my knee for chrissake. Are you kidding me? Buddhists kept rubbing it for good luck. It had Goodyear painted on the side and did side work floating silently over sporting events on weekends. The thing was massive.
Icing it after playing helped marginally, but it was clear that some serious deviltry was at play in my knee joint. And so I swallowed my machismo and went to see the doctor.
On a personal level, my doctor's a good guy, and on a professional level, he's on staff with two local professional sports teams here in Houston. This guy has seen a lot of knee injuries, and has treated some of the top professional athletes in the world, so I was prepared to accept is diagnosis. . . . . Or is it prognosis? Wait. . . . it's both. I was prepared to accept his diagnosis first, and then his prognosis. (Thank you Merriam-Webster's Online.)
At any rate, after an X-Ray and an MRI scan, my doctor recommended I go under the knife.
The MRI shows that part of my femur bone where it meets the other junk at the knee joint has developed a sort of "bruise". There's a fancy medical term for it, but damned if I can remember what it is offhand.
Anyway, this bruise most likely occurred as a result of some traumatic blow at some point. I've tried to replay every hard hit and drunken fall I can remember, but still can't pinpoint the exact event that caused it, but apparently, continued strenuous activity has prevented it from healing at a natural pace, and that's what's causing the pain and swelling.
According to the doctor, that particular part of the femur bone is vascular, meaning that blood actually flows through it, and that's how nutrients are distributed to the bone. Well, because I've continued to play like a kid at recess, the bruised area is not getting enough blood, and that's a bad thing. In fact, if the bone doesn't get blood, there's a chance the it will essentially die, and that's an extremely bad thing. If the bone dies, the cartilage that surrounds it and cushions it from my shin bone will also die, and the dead cartilage will begin to erode causing me a lot of pain, which will lead to me weeping like a girl, and that's an extraordinarily bad thing. The only way to fix that would be with reconstructive knee surgery. I'd be looking at 18 months of rehab just to get back to walking, if that happens. And I'd probably have to forget about ever playing sports again.
So, what to do?
Well, if you guessed "install a new bionic knee", you'd be wrong — unfortunately.
Barring any lightning fast advancements in the field of bionics over the next few days, I must endure a different procedure. The doctor wants to go in and drill holes in my femur bone at various points in the bruised area to encourage new blood vessels to grow and improve flow, thereby saving the bone and more importantly the cartilage.
The procedure apparently is not that difficult, and my doctor has performed it many times with great success; at least that's what he told me. So I'm encouraged by that. But the recovery time requires I do minimal activity. He expects me to be on crutches for one to two months while they continually scan my leg via MRI to see if the vascularity (is that a word?) has improved. And then if all goes well and I am released for activity again, I will have to work slowly back into full exercise mode.
In addition, since I'm pretty much going to be a statue for a long while, I'm seriously going to have to adjust my diet. Otherwise, before you know it, I'll have small moons orbiting me and people will start trying to push me back into the water.
Oh, and as I was typing this post, I got an email from the admin here at my office. She says she might be able to get me a handicap parking space for when I'm on crutches. That's a nice thing I guess, but I don't know if I should accept it, or man up and park in my normal spot. I mean, how many women could find a pasty, soft, semi-crippled man with an unusually strong gravitational pull attractive?
And that's really what it's all about; getting chicks. Does a sedentary blob of goo stand a chance?
I guess we'll see.
In the meantime, I think I'm going to go out and get face-down-in-the-gutter drunk tonight. It's not like I have anything else to do.
Don't get excited. I'm not done blogging (much to your chagrin, I'm sure). I'm just done being active for a while. I'm going to be sitting on my ass for a couple months.
See, the infrequent posts on this blog are not necessarily an indication of any intellectual bankruptcy on my part, though one could argue that I indeed suffer from such an affliction. No, the infrequent posts are due more to the fact that I like playing outside. Without fail, I will forgo sitting at my computer to enjoy a game of beach volleyball, or to go catch a wave or two, or to go for a run at the park, or to generally do anything that keeps me moving and in shape.
But now, because of an issue with my right knee, I'm going to be done with all that physical activity for a while.
Just to bore you with the particulars:
Recently, while playing volleyball I began experiencing some pain and swelling in my knee that adversely affected my game. And just to be clear, when I say swelling, I don't mean just a little puffiness. Oh, would that I did. It looked like I had a cooked ham strapped to my knee for chrissake. Are you kidding me? Buddhists kept rubbing it for good luck. It had Goodyear painted on the side and did side work floating silently over sporting events on weekends. The thing was massive.
Icing it after playing helped marginally, but it was clear that some serious deviltry was at play in my knee joint. And so I swallowed my machismo and went to see the doctor.
On a personal level, my doctor's a good guy, and on a professional level, he's on staff with two local professional sports teams here in Houston. This guy has seen a lot of knee injuries, and has treated some of the top professional athletes in the world, so I was prepared to accept is diagnosis. . . . . Or is it prognosis? Wait. . . . it's both. I was prepared to accept his diagnosis first, and then his prognosis. (Thank you Merriam-Webster's Online.)
At any rate, after an X-Ray and an MRI scan, my doctor recommended I go under the knife.
The MRI shows that part of my femur bone where it meets the other junk at the knee joint has developed a sort of "bruise". There's a fancy medical term for it, but damned if I can remember what it is offhand.
Anyway, this bruise most likely occurred as a result of some traumatic blow at some point. I've tried to replay every hard hit and drunken fall I can remember, but still can't pinpoint the exact event that caused it, but apparently, continued strenuous activity has prevented it from healing at a natural pace, and that's what's causing the pain and swelling.
According to the doctor, that particular part of the femur bone is vascular, meaning that blood actually flows through it, and that's how nutrients are distributed to the bone. Well, because I've continued to play like a kid at recess, the bruised area is not getting enough blood, and that's a bad thing. In fact, if the bone doesn't get blood, there's a chance the it will essentially die, and that's an extremely bad thing. If the bone dies, the cartilage that surrounds it and cushions it from my shin bone will also die, and the dead cartilage will begin to erode causing me a lot of pain, which will lead to me weeping like a girl, and that's an extraordinarily bad thing. The only way to fix that would be with reconstructive knee surgery. I'd be looking at 18 months of rehab just to get back to walking, if that happens. And I'd probably have to forget about ever playing sports again.
So, what to do?
Well, if you guessed "install a new bionic knee", you'd be wrong — unfortunately.
Barring any lightning fast advancements in the field of bionics over the next few days, I must endure a different procedure. The doctor wants to go in and drill holes in my femur bone at various points in the bruised area to encourage new blood vessels to grow and improve flow, thereby saving the bone and more importantly the cartilage.
The procedure apparently is not that difficult, and my doctor has performed it many times with great success; at least that's what he told me. So I'm encouraged by that. But the recovery time requires I do minimal activity. He expects me to be on crutches for one to two months while they continually scan my leg via MRI to see if the vascularity (is that a word?) has improved. And then if all goes well and I am released for activity again, I will have to work slowly back into full exercise mode.
In addition, since I'm pretty much going to be a statue for a long while, I'm seriously going to have to adjust my diet. Otherwise, before you know it, I'll have small moons orbiting me and people will start trying to push me back into the water.
Oh, and as I was typing this post, I got an email from the admin here at my office. She says she might be able to get me a handicap parking space for when I'm on crutches. That's a nice thing I guess, but I don't know if I should accept it, or man up and park in my normal spot. I mean, how many women could find a pasty, soft, semi-crippled man with an unusually strong gravitational pull attractive?
And that's really what it's all about; getting chicks. Does a sedentary blob of goo stand a chance?
I guess we'll see.
In the meantime, I think I'm going to go out and get face-down-in-the-gutter drunk tonight. It's not like I have anything else to do.
posted by Sam Ogden at
11:00 AM
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