The Silken Tent
My Letter to the World
December 2000
December 27, 2000
WednesdayThe first thing I did yesterday in the beauteous heavenly light of the Feast of Stephen was not hit the malls for after-Christmas sales, but drive to my surgeon's office for the long awaited evaluation of my knee problem.Most people, unless they're movie stars who reshape themselves a lot or sports stars who break things a lot, don't have someone they can refer to as "my surgeon," the way one might say "my dentist" or "my therapist." But my relationship with Dr. R. goes back to, ironically, the Feast of Stephen in 1995, when I slipped on our icy driveway and snapped my right fibula near the ankle. The injury required the installation of a plate and four screws, eight weeks in a cast, and a stern warning from my husband that he would not again have sympathy for someone who falls while negotiating an icy driveway in smooth-soled summer sandals.
Last year I fell again (see "Grumble Grumble, Took a Tumble") and once more came under the care of Dr. R. Now I'm back again, this time for an episode to be called "This Old Knee."
In August of 1999, while groping my way back from the bathroom in the dark, I slipped on one of the several magazines that usually occupy the floor on my side of the bed. I came down hard on my right knee. I mean hard. The pain lasted for about half an hour, and then mostly went away. It swelled, as it's supposed to, forming what we used to call a "gooney." Only the gooney never went away. It turned from bright red to a dusky purple, shook like finger jello, and made kneeling (which I do only rarely and can avoid altogether) difficult.
I had it aspirated twice -- 60cc of clear liquid would be drawn out, the thing would deflate like an old basketball, but in a few days pump itself up again. It didn't interfere with range of motion, just rode on the front of the knee ("pre-patellar"). While it was merely unattractive I ignored it. In October, however, it turned mean.
By the beginning of December it had all sorts of new aspects. It was a mottled purple and pink, it felt at least ten degrees hotter than the rest of my skin, the lump grew to the size of a baseball and just as hard, the leg from ankle to mid-thigh swelled like a hot dog, and, most important, I was in PAIN, a word I use advisedly.
I had to wait three weeks for an appointment. (Yes, I could have called someone else, but there's a reason why Dr. R. is so busy.) The pain is being caused by bits of calcified scar tissue, nearly microscopic beady thing like kidney stones that float in the swollen bursa and irritate the nerves. Solution: surgery, followed by two weeks of knee immobilization. (You can walk and move about as long as you don't bend the knee. You try it.)
The surgery will be performed on January 4, an outpatient "short procedure" which nevertheless requires general anesthetic. No, it's not "arthroscopic," where you have an itty bitty pinhole and everything sort of gets vacuumed out. It's the full conventional treatment, splaying the tissue out like a butterfly and excising all the junk. No, I don't know why it's done this way. I know only that I'm getting more and more disabled every day with it and if Dr. R. said he had to drill three holes in my skull to fix it, I would let him do it.
Oddly enough, since I got the diagnosis and treatment plan, the pain has increased but I'm tolerating it better. I'm a veteran of surgery where the condition to be fixed is so problematic that the pain of recovery is welcome because it's new and has an end date. It's the no driving for two weeks that will be the worst.
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