I'm out for a little bit

Not that that's news or anything...or not that I haven't already been out for a while (2 weeks as of today). I'm just really flipping bummed and getting a little pissed off and doing the whole "why me?" thing. Needless to say, I had my appointment with the orthopedic surgeon on Friday.

It wasn't all bad, but it wasn't all good either. First and foremost, he said that I'm wearing down the cartilage in my left knee (the one causing the end of all happiness in my life)...according to him, this isn't too hard to take care of, but it needs to be taken care of ASAP in order to find out what is going on with my meniscus. So, in order to do this, he suggests a cortisone injection right then and there and then a series of three other injections in which they'll put this "gel" substance into my cartilage (I think...I need to do more research and find a better way to say this...I will not have some kind of cool, bionic knee after this). The sucky part about these other injections (besides the pain, and if you know me, you know that I hyperventilate, cry, puke and do all kinds of other fun things at the mere idea of injections) is that they need to be done once a week, at the same time ever week...and he only offers them between the hours of 9-11 AM, Monday through Friday. Yep, that works out just lovely with my crazy, out of town work schedule...but luckily I work for an awesome firm and they're working me around my stupid injections. I won't be allowed to do anything strenuous after the injections and - ::gasp:: - no high heels for at least the day of the injections, but I think I can survive that. It'll be rough, but I'll do my best (I am also the girl who showed up for the appt w/the ortho wearing 4 inch knee high boots.....keep that in mind).

Sooo...back to my scary problem. If these injections work out, I'll be able to start running again soon. If I can do it pain-free, I'm good. If I have pian, it's almost definitely related to my meniscus. About 10 years ago I was in high school cheerleading - shocking, I know - and I was doing this cool little stunt called a bow and arrow (Note: This is not me, this is some random girl I found thanks to Google Image Search...also, I am afraid of heights and did not trust the other girls to hold me up, so my cool little stunt was performed on the ground, where I *thought* I'd be safe). Anyway, I finally got my leg up to places that normal physical anatomy would not allow it, and the leg I was standing on suddenly gave out and I wound up in a heap on the floor...I couldn't really figure out what happened and it took me a little while to realize that my knee cap was currently sitting on the outside of my leg. I wound up with a nasty dislocated patella and a torn meniscus...but the ortho I saw at that time said I didn't need surgery, but he wouldn't be surprised if I would need it by the time I was 25...well, I'll be 26 in April.

So this new ortho that I'm seeing said that meniscus tears never heal on their own...but at the same time, you don't actually need to fix them if they don't bother you. Considering that for the past several years my only exercise consisted of moving from the couch to the fridge, it didn't bother me...but now that I do slightly more than that, there's a chance it's bothering me. He said that the fact that swimming last Tuesday night and the way he was moving me around hurt my knee, he'd be surprised if I'm not having some meniscus problems...but until I have this cartilage problem under control, there's no way to know for sure where my pain is coming from. So once I get that fixed, if I still have pain, I go in for an MRI to see where and how bad the tear is, then we discuss the surgery options...and I say goodbye to Seattle and probably to any other full marathon I was hoping to do this year too. The hubs is taking me to Jamacia in April, so any surgery would have to wait till after that. :(

So, sorry for the novel, but there it is...the bane of my existance.