~ The Damned Knee ~

My Dad had both knees replaced.  My Mom had both knees replaced. My Grandmother had both knees replaced.  All four of us children have had ACL Knee Repairs.

Was God smoking dope when he designed the chromosomes for my family’s knees?  More importantly, am I going to hell for asking that question?

So I went back to Orthopedic Surgeon Dr. Raffo today because:

1) I’m working on becoming a professional hypochondriac,

2) I’m trying to get all my medical needs taken care of before our nation’s medicine gets socialized,

3) All of the people in that office are beautiful, and sometimes I just like to surround myself with the beautiful people in this world,

4) My knee still hurts like hell, despite the cortisone shot, and I’m no hero and don’t like to suffer.

So off I went.  I’d had an MRI done earlier this week and the pretty young tech, Kate, who prepped me for the doc had given me a printout of the results. It read:  Effusion (swelling).  Possible meniscus degeneration.  ACL might still be intact.  OsteoArthritis.

No surprises there.  Seemed pretty dry reading, really.  I feared it would not be enough to adequately describe my pain and deterioration of quality of life so I added in letters similar to the typeset:  Hurts like a bitch.

(It’s ok to use the word ‘bitch’ as a medical descriptor.  On the pain scale of 1-10, it’s around 11 or 12.)

I’ll give you a short version of the visit, because I know you care:

1) His intern, Kelly, is still cute as a button.

2) His X-ray tech, John, is Italian and was teaching me romantic words and cuss words.  Because in Italy, those two are often in the same sentence.

3) Dr Raffo gave me my options.  Then he sucked around 25cc’s of fluid that had chunks of osteoarthritic materials (otherwise known as ‘gunk’) floating around in it, out of my knee.

4) He injected 6 cc’s of Chicken Comb into my knee.

Wait, WHAT?

Well, not exactly chicken comb.  Just a compound from the Chicken Comb.

Oh.  That makes so much more sense.

You see, there is this medicine called Synvisc that mimics the Synovial Fluid that we naturally have in our knees.  It acts as a cushion for the bone on bone situation going on in there. And when you have osteoarthritis, that cushion gets broken down and goes away.  The theory with the Synvisc aka Chicken-Comb-Crap is that it replaces our Synovial Fluid Cushion, and bada bing, bada boom, we’re back in ambulatory business.

So let me paint this picture for you.  Picture a needle.  A Big Honkin’ Needle.  Oh sure, there are bigger ones out there, but for the sake of good story telling, go with the Big Honkin’ picture.  He violently stabbed that thing in my knee about a dozen times like I was in the shower in Norman Bate’s Motel or something.

No?

Oh, all right, it was only once and he was fairly gentle.  But it might as well as been a dozen.  I’m such a wuss.

And then he jammed roughly 2 gallons of the chicken goop into my knee.

No?

Ok. It was only 6 cc’s, or, a teaspoon and a half.  But it was the biggest teaspoon and a half I’ve ever had stuck into my knee.

I whimpered.  I may have yelled ‘SON OF A BISCUIT!’ out loud, because I vaguely remember Kate shutting the door quickly and saying something about young kids in the next room.

So now we wait and see.  He said we’d know in two weeks.   If nothing gets better…it’s….it’s…. it’s….

THE KNIFE.

(Dun Dun DUN!)