<deleted pitiful excuses for not blogging until now>

Well I’ve had the surgery on my knee. My right knee if I haven’t mentioned that before now. I went in for an MRI and  it turned out that although the meniscus and other connecting thingies that are in the knee look just fine, they found an “unidentified floating object”. Turns out the floater was a piece of me, ripped off from the underside of my arthritic knee cap. Yes I’ve got advanced osteo-arthritis in my knee cap – can you believe that. The surgeon wasn’t exactly sure how it had occurred, but pointed out that my legs tend to bow inwards and my falling arches don’t help the situation. Given I’ve only being wearing orthotics for about 3 years now, the damage was probably gradual and over many years. A weak IT-band (the thing that runs down the outside of the leg from the hip to under the knee-cap) also contributed to a weaker knee cap.

The surgery was a little fun though I must admit. I’ve been in hospital twice in my life, once for an in-excusably stupid attempt to save a brick wall from being knocked over by my 1^st car when I was 18 years old (brick wall and pelvis fractured but car a-ok!), and again for this knee surgery. The plan was to flood the area with saline fluid, stick in the arthroscopic gear and pull out the offending floatie. I had to make sure I hadn’t had anything to eat or drink all day, which wasn’t hard as I had to be at the hospital by 10am. Then the man with the drugs paid me a visit. He was very friendly, slightly quirky and adept at making small talk feel interesting.

 I walked into the surgery room which wasn’t what I was expecting, I thought I’d be wheeled in like you see in TV shows. Climbed up on the bed and the kind drug man started talking to me about Australia. I was saying how the Westminster system is way better than whatever system they have here in the states is and then….blackness. The next thing I saw when I opened my eyes was a nurse that was probably sitting next to me to make sure I woke up. I was back in the preparatory room and feeling very, very sleepy.

 I was tended to lovingly by Amy and made a quick recovery so that I could limp around after just a day, and was back at work in two days. Lots of icing and elevation. Now I’m at the Pro-Club doing physiotherapy and things are getting stronger each day. The trick to building strength is actually in the surrounding muscles, particularly the IT band and bum muscles. These all help to pull the knee cap across the knee so that it runs straight up and down rather than on an arc. Check out the crazy in-knee shots they took. There were a whole heap of floaties in there, these were the things that would catch in the knee joint sometimes when I was moving around. One of them had to be chopped into smaller pieces before being vacuumed out. They also “mowed the lawn” while they were in there to reduce the likelihood that this will re-occur, the lobster meat looking stringy bits on the underside of my knee cap were mowed down to make a smoother surface. Amazing really.

 The image with PF written under it is the knee cap before they mowed. The p PF is post mowing. The other shots are mostly floaties.