I went to the Orthopedic Surgeon today. (Actually, I went to the very nice PA who works with Orthopedic Surgeons and had about a billion times more time to spend on me than the surgeon did.) I explained my mysterious knee-malady. She agreed that the knee looked really really swollen. She pulled it and twisted it, trying to figure out where the boo boo was. The originally injured tendon was right about where it should be at 10 weeks of healing. The stiff tendon was fine. The swelling? Was downright mysterious.
Then, she aspirated my leg. NOTE: If you have problems with needles, do us all a favor and stop reading now.
OMG.
For those of you not following along closely with my entire life story, I have what we like to call a “high pain tolerance”. I gave birth without drugs – without so much as tylenol – TWICE. But I’m really kind of personally struggling right now. There’s this long-going knee thing and the back thing and the two-year-old-asserting-himself thing, and the constant feeling that I’ve completely fallen down on everything I need to do. I’m having a hard time. This, I truly believe, has an impact on one’s ability to tolerate pain.
First the PA pulled out a bottle of licodaine. This is a sign you will not enjoy your next 15 minutes or so. Then she pulled out two hugely ginormous needles with veritable vats of suction capacity. My confidence in my buffosity began to wane. The licodaine burned. Then the big needle. I won’t go into exactly what she did with it. Let’s just say that the licodaine was insufficient, I screamed several times, and at the end there was 30 ccs of clear yellow fluid in the syringe.
She’s sending the fluid into the lab to check for things I hadn’t thought to worry about (infection, lyme disease, gout). I’m also to be scheduled for an MRI so we can get to the bottom of this mysterious swelling. (She seemed skeptical that sitting with my knee bent had cause it, but by gum the correlation was so unmistakable!) She says my knee should feel better now that it doesn’t have 30 ccs of extraneous fluid in it. I’m still waiting for that.
But boy, am I out of cope. I hope the boys are superlatively behaved tonight, or they may find themselves headed to bed at 6:15.
My Truant Pen 
How about if you head for bed at 6:15! Dad says the process feels like turkey basters being used in reverse. He had it done every week for about 10 weeks and he is all sympathy! You need a designated driver, and he suggests lubrication before you get there.
You hereby have permission to sit in an airconditioned room for the weekend and read novels. Or swim. Or go to Lowes and use their handicapped cart to make a slow tour.
We are truly sorry! We are praying for you and your knee.
-gmm (this post contains contributions and was approved by -gpp)
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Ugh ugh ugh ugh ugh. I am so sorry. (On another note, how does one KEEP children in bed when they have an early bedtime? You must have some uber-skillz!) Speedy recovery wishes. You’ve been in my thoughts.
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No super skillz – Thane’s only just now figuring that we can get out of his bed! Also, he goes to bed really really well. Grey wasn’t so easy.
The aspiration actually seems to have helped considerably, for all it was extremely unpleasant at the time.
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