(no subject)
And now, some retrospective gibberish, mint flavored for your pleasure.
As related to you, my faithful readers, so many ages ago, I recently injured my knee most heinously. This being the third time I have dislocated my knee like this, the doctor finally stated that this problem would need to be corrected surgically, or it would continue happening and get worse every time. Stubborn though I occasionally am, I caved in and agreed to, as my sensei put it, "go under the knife".
Curses.
Not that I'm really afraid of surgery or anything; this minor arthroscopic invasion is nothing compared to some other things I've had done to me. But knees are fragile creatures, and ideally I'd like to not spend the rest of my life with a limb mangled by surgery. So, there's the choice- mangled by surgery, or hobbled by natural healing. Tough call. I'll take mangled for $2149432 after insurance, Alex.
They apparently took out a big floating piece of bone or calcified material or what not during the procedure. It was just floating around in there. They wouldn't let me keep it, though. My argument of "it's mine; it came out of my knee, after all" didn't go very far. Harrumph. I went to surgery and all I got was a lousy blood donut.
What, you might ask, is a blood donut? Well, if you're squeamish, you don't want me to answer. Skip to the next paragraph. ......... Okay, fair warning given, here we go. A Hemovac is a small vacuum-sealed disk attached to the surgical entry point (I think) via a tube. It's designed to suck excess fluids out of the operated-upon area. But it dangles outside the body, so I had to carry it around, like a colostomy bag. Only it was filling with blood. So, within half a day, the disk has expanded to the size of a Dunkin Donut, and it's got red fluids sloshing around inside, so it was, in essence, not unlike a jelly donut. With blood. Now, they took the donut away after a day, and also had to remove the tube it was attached to. What I didn't realize was exactly how deeply inside my leg that tube reached. They pulled that sucker out and it felt like a fat worm wiggling under and through my knee. Not painful, but very wiggy. ghostwriterxx saw the whole thing, much to her regret. Nonetheless, despite such horrors and atrocities, she and deinemuse were very kind in taking care of "Gimpy", as I came to be named. They're sweet.
Prior to that, I spent a week in Arizona relaxing as a guest of ladybugbutt. Sunny. The highlight of the week, aside from her scintillating company and plentiful stash of booze, not to mention the greatest comeback in the history of Pictionary games, was a visit to Kartchner Caverns. Absolutely beautiful. Never been in a cavern before, not like that at least. Except one time in Portugal when we found a hole in the ground and crawled in and found a big cavern, but couldn't get through to it. Ah, the things you do when you're 15 and stupid.
Now I'm back at work. The problem with such small-scale surgeries is that you recover quick and don't get enough medical leave from work. That's just plain wrong. I was out of commission for six weeks after my spinal surgery. Six weeks! That's like taking my year's allotment of vacation days all at once, just for kicks! But alas, no such luck this time. Better luck next time. Well, no, hopefully better luck this time, so I never have this kind of surgery done again. Hopefully.
As related to you, my faithful readers, so many ages ago, I recently injured my knee most heinously. This being the third time I have dislocated my knee like this, the doctor finally stated that this problem would need to be corrected surgically, or it would continue happening and get worse every time. Stubborn though I occasionally am, I caved in and agreed to, as my sensei put it, "go under the knife".
Curses.
Not that I'm really afraid of surgery or anything; this minor arthroscopic invasion is nothing compared to some other things I've had done to me. But knees are fragile creatures, and ideally I'd like to not spend the rest of my life with a limb mangled by surgery. So, there's the choice- mangled by surgery, or hobbled by natural healing. Tough call. I'll take mangled for $2149432 after insurance, Alex.
They apparently took out a big floating piece of bone or calcified material or what not during the procedure. It was just floating around in there. They wouldn't let me keep it, though. My argument of "it's mine; it came out of my knee, after all" didn't go very far. Harrumph. I went to surgery and all I got was a lousy blood donut.
What, you might ask, is a blood donut? Well, if you're squeamish, you don't want me to answer. Skip to the next paragraph. ......... Okay, fair warning given, here we go. A Hemovac is a small vacuum-sealed disk attached to the surgical entry point (I think) via a tube. It's designed to suck excess fluids out of the operated-upon area. But it dangles outside the body, so I had to carry it around, like a colostomy bag. Only it was filling with blood. So, within half a day, the disk has expanded to the size of a Dunkin Donut, and it's got red fluids sloshing around inside, so it was, in essence, not unlike a jelly donut. With blood. Now, they took the donut away after a day, and also had to remove the tube it was attached to. What I didn't realize was exactly how deeply inside my leg that tube reached. They pulled that sucker out and it felt like a fat worm wiggling under and through my knee. Not painful, but very wiggy. ghostwriterxx saw the whole thing, much to her regret. Nonetheless, despite such horrors and atrocities, she and deinemuse were very kind in taking care of "Gimpy", as I came to be named. They're sweet.
Prior to that, I spent a week in Arizona relaxing as a guest of ladybugbutt. Sunny. The highlight of the week, aside from her scintillating company and plentiful stash of booze, not to mention the greatest comeback in the history of Pictionary games, was a visit to Kartchner Caverns. Absolutely beautiful. Never been in a cavern before, not like that at least. Except one time in Portugal when we found a hole in the ground and crawled in and found a big cavern, but couldn't get through to it. Ah, the things you do when you're 15 and stupid.
Now I'm back at work. The problem with such small-scale surgeries is that you recover quick and don't get enough medical leave from work. That's just plain wrong. I was out of commission for six weeks after my spinal surgery. Six weeks! That's like taking my year's allotment of vacation days all at once, just for kicks! But alas, no such luck this time. Better luck next time. Well, no, hopefully better luck this time, so I never have this kind of surgery done again. Hopefully.