In a dashing break from my imprisonment, I threw a walker through my hospital room window, cleared the broken glass with a crutch, and then rappelled down some hospital sheets tied together, to run away from angry orderlies waving hypos filled with calming drugs…

Nah, not really. I endured four or five boring hours of waiting while paperwork was filled out, took an elevator, and hobbled slowly home. My knee is much better now — I won’t exactly be tap dancing, but I can get out of a chair and walk across the room without blistering the cat’s delicate ears with profanity, anyway.

Interestingly, I ran into what has to be a common doctor’s dilemma. They had multiple hypotheses about what was wrong — gout was high on the list, with a bacterial infection in the joint capsule running second — but you don’t get to do the nice tidy sequential controlled experiment when your patient is in great pain. So they treated me for both possibilities simultaneously, while doing lots of diagnostic tests. And then they discover both that my synovial fluid had none of the crystallized uric acid characteristic of gout, and was also delightfully clean of bacteria. But I was getting better anyway. They had some other hypotheses that they were interested in looking into, but dang, the patient was healing and their interesting disorder was fast disappearing. So I checked out, and we still don’t know what caused the problem, or what fixed it. This is why I never wanted to be a doctor: it’s so unsatisfying to not be able to treat the patient as an experiment.

Although I am warned that if the knee worsens once I’m home, I need to report in to the hospital immediately, and count on staying there for at least a week while they dismantle the joint. I’m hoping I don’t have to give them closure on this one.

I’ll never get picked up in the NFL draft now.

Those of you who read the comments know I was whining a little bit about this sudden knee pain that developed over night. I was actually downplaying it — any time I bent my knee I was in excruciating agony. My wife can tell you that there was much screaming and groaning and cussing at our house the last few days. I’ve been basically immobile.

So I got into the doctor’s this morning. They poked and prodded and twisted and bent the joint, and I dutifully turned pale and howled and threatened to vomit, cursing the entire medical profession. In revenge, they first pulled out a gigantic needle and a huge syringe, and tapped my knee, sucking out large quantities of synovial fluid. As if that wasn’t enough, they’ve also hospitalized me — I’m under observation and pain management for a few days, while they carry out tests to figure out what made my knee joint go bad. If it turns out to be an infection…surgery. Whee.

Until then, I’m stuck in a bed with needles stuck in me, and they’re pumping me full of antibiotics and morphine and a whole bunch of good happy drugs. I’m already feeling blissful and sleepy. I might be out in 24 hours, or maybe 48, or maybe they’ll be hacking cartilage for a while. You don’t need me right now, right?

I have arrived in Hartford. Nice airport. Now I have to find my way to my hotel, and then I have a few hours to explore before my talk. I hear there is a fascinating historical site, Mark Twain House, near my hotel–maybe I’ll take a tour.

It should be interesting — I’ll be at the home of that well-known heretic, Mark Twain, from 7 to 8:30 pm. Instead of my usual talk, we’re doing something a little different: a conversation with Jacques Lamarre, the director of the place, about all this godlessness popping up everywhere. If you’re going to go to the official event, you should make reservations now!

Also, there were many suggestions about what to do afterwards, and I’m making an executive decision: let’s meet at Vaughan’s Public House around 9pm. I’m a sucker for an Irish pub.

I took a nap.

Hey, it seemed like the fatherly thing to do. Also, loafing.

I’m going to be flying in to Hartford, Connecticut on 18 June to have a public conversation about The Happy Atheist. I know some people won’t be free at 7pm to join in, and I’ve been asked if there are any other public events planned while I’m there.

No, there isn’t. It’s a real blitz — I fly in on Wednesday morning, and fly out again early on Thursday. But I’m amenable! I’m staying at the Hilton Hartford on Trumbull Street, and if anyone knows of any good nearby places (or we could just meet at the Hilton bar), let me know and we’ll arrange something for post-talk relaxation. I imagine I’ll be free after 9pm, and I just have to be at the airport around 4am, so what the heck, the night is a dead loss anyway. Make it better.

While I was in Seattle, I got my picture taken with all of my surviving siblings, my mother, one grand-nephew, and my mother’s dog.

Tomi, Mike, Jim in back; Alex, Mom, Caryn, me in the middle; Bebe front.

This is mostly the same crew a few years back.

Caryn, Tomi in back; Jim, Mike, and me up front.

We haven’t changed a bit.