Wednesday, January 26, 2011

Water on the Knee

Remember the game "Operation" that we played as kids? If you blocked it out, it looked something like this:


Some days, I feel a lot like this sad sack. I feel I'm on the slippery slope of eventually needing a lot of new body parts. There are a few I'd really like to trade in for new ones, but I watched too many episodes of Nip/Tuck to go that route. I can just hear Drs. Troy and McNamara asking, "Carol, tell us what you don't like about yourself?"

Anyway, I digress. Back in October, I did a graceful fall off the bottom step into my basement. If judges had been present, I'm sure I would have been awarded an extra 3.1 for degree of difficulty. I was dressed in a skirt and tights on my way to my niece's bridal shower on a brisk, yet dreary-looking, Sunday morning. So, there I was, in a skirt, carrying a large gift bag filled with martini glasses and an assortment of vodka and mixers on my left hip and a large tumbler of coffee in my right hand. Miss last step, fall about 16" squarely onto my right knee, spill coffee into gift bag, knee bleeds through tights. Needless to say....I was not happy. Deep cleansing breaths....let it go. 

I hobbled around for a few weeks, things seemed to get better. Last week, I think I spent too much time on the couch on the MLK holiday, causing a knee flare up. Of course, the awfulizer in me has me ready for knee replacement, or at the very least an ACL tear. Nope, nothing that glamorous - patellofemoral pain syndrome, which--dumbed down--is pain in the knee cap. It took nearly 3 hours at the UI Sports Medicine clinic to get this diagnosis. Oh, and probably several hundred dollars. 

And the best part....basically the doctor said I should lose weight! WOW, you're kidding. I had no idea. Did you know that for every 10 pounds of weight it places 100 pounds of torque on your knees because of the "vector." OK...so I must have about 2 tons of torque hitting my knees. Think of the POWER.

My luck, I'll have wrenched ankle next.

1 comment:

  1. Take out wrenched ankle. Isn't that how the game goes? This is just the beginning of the end for us. The day I turned 40 I went blind (aka needed glasses). I think it's all downhill from here. I'm always achey now whenever I get up. But I AM fighting it every step of the way. Um, and my mom's Doc told her to lose weight and he was an easy 300!

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