Knee Officially = Toast

[railenthe]

“Wow.”

“Yeah.”

“Crap.”

Three short words in a tiny doctor’s exam room mean much more than I though they would.

I’m partially feeling vindicated and partially wondering why it took so long to find out. Last Friday, I’d gone to see if I could get some freelancing done (gotta have money to feed the starving writerbrain after all) when—on a perfectly normal step with two of my best friends watching it—my knee decides that now is an awesome time to slide the hell out of joint.

I’m pretty sure the resultant shriek might’ve scared a few people in the next building.

I’m in enough pain that I can’t consciously direct my fall somewhere safe, so I wind up hitting my head, while with my other hand I’m trying to prevent my kneecap from going anywhere else it’s not supposed to be. Somehow I manage to wrench it back into the proper place, and I have to grit my teeth against the physical contact as my friend helps me gimp over to the couch. The swelling started almost immediately—but I knew something was just plain off about this one.

…of course, a vicodyn later, I reeeeeally don’t give a fuck. I concentrate on bending my leg every once in a while because otherwise, it will lock into place.

Not even a whole day later, I’m napping after work and suddenly, the familiar sawing-buzzing-pulsing pain in my leg alerts me to the fact that my knee has simply drifted apart again in my sleep. (I bet the neighbors thought I was getting flashbacks again.) Again, I wrench it back into place. The leg feels more wrong than it did the day before. I make an immediate call to the doctor’s office to have the thing looked at.

“Work keeps sending me to physical therapy,” I answer. “…I just try to keep a lot of anti-inflammatories in my system to keep it from getting as big as a brick.”

“…yeah, that’s not going to do you any good.”

“It’s bad enough that I’m beginning to think that lupus isn’t such a joke.”

“I don’t think it’s lupus. Normally that doesn’t cause joint damage. And you don’t have any arthritis anywhere.”

Well, crap, I think. “Then that means…?”

“I have no idea what’s happening to your knee. But it’s pretty obvious the thing’s falling apart.”

“Lemme get this straight.” I put a finger up, ticking down the facts. “We don’t know why this is happening. We do know it’s dis-integrating. And we’ve done everything that can be done outside of busting it up and putting it back together again.”

“Not how I would’ve put it but basically.”

“Nice. How the Sam hell did I mange that.”

“That’s what we’re trying to figure out.”

---

Yep. My knee is officially toast.