At Their Mercy

All I have to do is follow doctor's orders. I would say, without exaggeration, that fifteen people have told me this. Three weeks from tomorrow I'm scheduled to do the unthinkable - place myself in the hands of humans of the variety that I consider to be a shade smarmier than lawyers. I'm going to allow them to incapacitate me while they come at me with scalpels, saws and hammers. Allegedly, when I come to, I'll have a new and much better right knee. If I follow doctor's orders and physical therapy exercises, I should be pretty much healed in six weeks, and ready to go back to work in three months. All fifteen said that their only regret is that they didn't get it done sooner. Well heck, I've only been suffering with this knee for forty years, what's the hurry?

Actually, until about ten or fifteen years ago, it was what Carmen described as my  "trick knee." Sometimes I would twist it just the wrong way, it would issue forth a loud *POP* and hurt like a bitch for a week or so. My response to her was that this was not a very good trick.

During the "double naught" years, this knee began to just hurt all the time. If it stayed in one position for very long (like ten minutes) it would shoot pain like arrows until I moved it around. In 2004, Carmen talked me into seeing a medical human about it. He said I was not a candidate for replacement. He trimmed the meniscus and shot the knee full of cortizone, and it was better for a while. Then we moved to Boston, and I walked about two thousand miles. Albuquerque a few hundred more, and then Meadville. Watching me limp everywhere was painful for her, so Carmen talked me into another doctor visit.

My knee hurts a heck of a lot worse since I saw the X-rays. The right side of my right knee is pretty much bone on bone. I never noticed until that visit that the shin bone shoots off at about a five degree angle from the knee down. Well, no wonder it hurts!

I will be spending a lot of my life flat on my back with my leg elevated and straight. Carmen will let me use her oldest laptop to keep up with my Scrabble games. I'm betting the blogs will get a shot in the arm as well. There you are, a silver lining.