Things always fall apart when the warranty expires

Ever since I hurt my knee a week ago, I’ve been thinking there has to be some reason why this happened. I refuse to acknowledge this was just some random act of stupidity and I fell and hurt myself because of, you know, gravity. We had to miss Nathan’s cousin’s wedding on Saturday because I could not handle the 3-plus hour round trip, so I thought perhaps we were meant to avoid some horrific traffic accident that would have left Autumn an orphan. I still have the check the newspapers to see if that theory has any merit, but it doesn’t really matter anymore because today I think I was given an answer to my question.

This happened so an orthopedic surgeon could tell me exactly how fucked up my knees really are.

I had no idea the extent to which I am falling apart. Nathan and I were sitting in the exam room, and as the doctor walked in, he looked at my battered and bruised knee with some surprise and said, “Oh, it looks like you have an injury there.”

I felt a twinge of fear and thought perhaps I’d been referred to a quack. “Yeah that would be why I’m here,” I said.

It would seem the doctor was surprised by my injury because, from looking at the x-ray of my knee, he was under the impression he was going to be seeing someone with a chronic knee problem. My kneecap is not sitting where it’s supposed to be sitting, but apparently that was not the result of the injury. That’s just how I’m built and is probably a congenital condition. I guess another thank-you note to my mother is in order because this shit has to be coming from her side of the gene pool.

The good news is the knee injury causing me the most discomfort at present is not serious. The doctor determined everything was pretty much OK by sticking an 18-gauge needle into the tissue under my knee to see what color the fluid was that was extracted.

“Have you ever seen an 18-gauge needle before?” he asked

“Um, yeah,” I said, “They used one on last week’s episode of ‘Grey’s Anatomy’ and that sucker was huge.”

He smiled and reassured me I wouldn’t feel the poke of the huge needle because he was going to numb the area with two little needles first and that those pokes would probably sting more than the big one. And he wasn’t lying. They hurt like a sonofabitch and Nathan nearly passed out from the sight of it. He told the doctor he was feeling lightheaded and was immediately ushered into a nearby room to lie down and put his feet up. He was even given a cold, damp washcloth and when the doctor returned he found me in a fit of giggles. “My husband doesn’t like needles, so he’d best stay in the other room until we’re finished,” I said.

After the fluid was drained I could more easily bend my knee. Nathan came back into the room and we were told what I have to do to strengthen my knee in the next couple of weeks before we see the doctor for a follow-up appointment. But there’s still the issue of my fucked up kneecap. In short, I need surgery to correct the problem. I don’t need it immediately, but the doctor said he wouldn’t be a good surgeon if he told me this was something I could ignore. If I do ignore it, we’re talking total kneecap replacement and that’s something I’d really like to avoid.

I guess all of this is a wake-up call. Even though the doctor did say this was most likely a congenital problem, carrying around twice my healthy body weight can’t be good for my joints. So I must lose some weight. In light of this knee problem, however, I am no longer able to use a treadmill, exercise bike, elliptical machine or any other piece of exercise equipment that puts stress on my knees. The doctor said the only thing I should be doing for exercise is swimming.

When Nathan heard that he chuckled and said, “And we just decided to get rid of our pool.”