I had my medical follow-up this morning, and it was entertaining. We looked at photos from my arthroscopic surgery! That photo to the right is not my knee; my knee was much more scruffy and cluttered with debris, that got scoured out. Everything is healing up just fine, and I have to stick with the PT and build everything back up into a state of normalcy.

Prognosis positive!

After a long session of flexing and extending my knee, my physical therapist plugged me into an ice machine that circulated cold water around the poor tired limb.

The end result: I’m told I’m healing up very well, the recommendation is that I just do one more PT session and continue exercises at home, but so far I’m ahead of the game. I also managed to walk the 3½ blocks between my house and the hospital without much difficulty.

I look forward to returning to my hobby of Cossack-style dancing next week.

That strange pink blob is my right knee, adorned with the fading signatures of myself and the surgeon. It’s lumpy and a bit swollen, still recovering from the stabbings, marked by a pair of white tags. I’m now beginning to feel somewhat normal, 4 days after the operation.

At first, it was painful and sensitive — I couldn’t really walk on it. That’s been changing fast, though, and now I can stand on that leg without grimacing and saying obscenities, and I can get about with the aid of a walker fairly well. Getting up from a sitting position is terribly painful, so I’ve avoided sitting much, lounging about in bed, mostly. Today that avoidance ends, and I just have to work on sitting down and standing up and shuffling slowly about the house.

I have yet to master stairs. There are two steps to get into the house from outside, and I have to work on conquering them so that I then have full freedom to explore the universe, gingerly.

I am also signed up for several weeks of physical therapy, and after that, I expect to be hiking through the cobwebby wilderness once again.

I’m back from my knee surgery, and I only look half-dead.

All went well, I’m on hydrocodone for a couple of days, but the doctor did minimal hacking and my knee can bear my weight even now. We’ll have to see how I feel once the drugs wear off, but I anticipate a rapid recovery.

Wow, it’s hard to type while on narcotics…

Bright and early tomorrow morning, I’m getting arthroscopic surgery on my knee. This morning I was off at the physical therapy place, getting mentally prepared for what is to come.

We went over my post-op exercises. I practiced using crutches. I got coached on the warning signs — if I see yellow pus leaking out of the incision, or red streaks emanating from the knee, go to the emergency room immediately. Uh, duh. I also got instructed on the pre-op routine for today, which mainly involves not eating or drinking tonight, and washing the surgical area with a special soap.

I was also getting prepared for the worst. Best case: I get a simple debridement, and face about two weeks of recovery. Worst case: if there is a lot of repair work done, I’m looking at 6 to 12 weeks of recovery. There is no option to look forward to.

After that depressing experience, I went to the lab and fed all the spiders to cheer myself up. Then I grabbed my laptop and set it up near my bed, since I’ll be spending at least the next couple of days there. I may be glued to the computer for a while.

This was the wrong day to discover this study.

A major 10-year clinical trial is turning one of the world’s most common knee surgeries on its head. Researchers found that trimming a damaged meniscus—a procedure long believed to relieve pain—offers no real benefit over placebo surgery. Even more surprising, patients who had the operation actually fared worse over time, with more symptoms, poorer function, faster progression of osteoarthritis, and a greater likelihood of needing additional surgery.

Shortly, I’m going in to the local hospital to get an MRI to update the status of my knees before I get that same surgery in less than two weeks.

Fuck. I have been eager to get an operation that promised to ease pain and improve mobility just in time for the summer field season, and now there’s evidence that is also going to diminish the placebo effect.

I’m going in to the local hospital this morning to plan my ambulatory future. I’m getting some X-rays of my knees done, and meeting with an orthopedic surgeon to, I hope, schedule arthropedic surgery to patch up a torn meniscus. This has been pending for over a year — a long, miserable year of aching knees — but my initial treatment was canceled when I had a broken blood vessel in my eye. Clearly, it was too dangerous to operate on my knee!

So, fingers crossed. I really want this surgery to restore my mobility, all of my summer plans hinge on it. This doctor seems to be pretty quick to put off work on the slightest pretext, though, so I don’t have a tremendous amount of confidence that I’m going to be restored soon. I’ll know in a few hours.

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It was a successful meeting: I am scheduled for knee surgery on the 16th of May. Hip hip hooray! Or should that be knee knee hooray?

I walked back into work this morning — the place is really dead today, I think a lot of students are struggling to get back to campus, and those who are here aren’t enthused about walking across snow-choked streets. Since I’d been absent for a few days myself, I had a bunch of chores to catch up on, herding flies and checking on spiders, so I had to do more walking than usual. I noticed something annoying.

I’ve got this torn meniscus in my right knee that has been going untreated, in the hopes that it would close up on its own. It hasn’t. As I was walking, I noticed that my right knee was getting gradually hotter and hotter, like a mechanical part that was out of lubricant. It was getting so hot that I imagined it bursting into flames as I spiraled down into a catastrophic fiery explosion.

I have done the sensible thing and am sitting down in my office as the heat slowly dies down. I don’t think I have to worry about crashing now, but I was concerned about my right pants leg catching fire.

I don’t have to move until my class at 1:00, and I should have cooled down by then. If you hear about a case of spontaneous combustion in western Minnesota, though, I thought I’d let you know so you can all say you know the guy.

Today is our 46th wedding anniversary. I have no idea why she agreed to it in the first place.

No celebration today. We’re both just going to work, she won’t get home until 11pm, we don’t even have dinner plans.