During Christmas break, my friend recently gave me a hard time about not posting.
So, here’s a post. My left knee is fucked. I mentioned this last spring, but it’s just gotten a lot worse over the last 6 months or so. Bad enough, in fact, that I went to the doctor. Said doctor sent me to have an MRI. MRI results said a lot of things, but the ones that bugged me the most where these:
- Multiple severe degenerative signals in the posterior horn of the medial meniscus with readily identifiable surface reaching tears.
- Severe thinning of the articular cartilage in the inferolateral patellar facet.
- Moderate lateral pretibial soft tissue swelling is evident.
I may not know what that means medically, but I know what it means in reality—that when I walk, my knee hurts. A lot. Debilitating, crippling, I’d-rather-crawl-than-walk, level 9, pure pain. They want to go in and cut my knee open and “…trim…” some of my meniscus out. Ouch!
There’s just two rather large problems with that. First, The posterior horn is hard to reach because the bones of femur and tibia are in the way. Secondly, it doesn’t _really_ hurt when I ride. It can get uncomfortable, sure, but it’s not that bad……..and I hate doctors.
For the longest time after my motorcycle accident, I had issues with doctors. I still get a little queasy when walking into a hospital. My hand was one thing—I didn’t have a choice there at all–it was essentially a pile of fleshy-jello. But this is different. I can still function. Sort of. And like I said, it doesn’t bother me on the bike that much….. Ugh.
It’s not that I dislike my doctor, or that I don’t trust that this needs to be done. I’ve known since 2001 that my knee was fucked and needed work. I mean, like, a truck landed on me, fer chrissake. I’ve just been hoping that it’d get better. Magically! That’s not working.
So after the MRI, I had surgery scheduled here in Fairbanks for a week from now. I called and canceled it. I know it seems like it’s something simple and that I’m just bitching, but honestly, I’m just fucking scared to have somebody cut me open. Also, this will put me on my ass for a while, and I’m not really in a position for that.
Second opinion time, methinks.
