Knee - An Historic Saga

Up and down and all around.

Between the surgery and the first follow-up appointment, my intuition told me the fucking thing was not healing right. The follow-up appointment freaked me out so I shit all over the hospital and the surgeon in my sunny "how did your appointment go" text, threatening to get a second opinion. But I held off for a few days to see what might happen.

What happened was I was able to get off the crutches and walk around the house fairly comfortably. I decided this was a good sign.

At the follow-up to the follow-up appointment things were neutral. I walked in without crutches because I felt I should - it's important to keep up appearances; I was not comfortable. The knee was still swollen, we talked, Dr. Surgeon told me I could skip physical therapy if I religiously did the 10 exercises spelled out on the pages he gave me. I'm doing the exercises.

I figured out that work is fucking up my knee. I am taking time off. Exercising the knee, icing it, resting it. 

Results have been inconsistent and infuriating. The knee still hurts; the knee feels fucked up and uncomfortable and not right and like it is made of Waterford Crystal. Last week I was coming down the stairs and the fucking thing kind of popped and the pain was jagged and ragged. What the ever-loving fuck? It has been five weeks since the surgery.

I just called Dartmouth-Hitchcock to set up an appointment to get a second opinion. Get someone else to poke around inside my knee to see what's what.

I am in fucking limbo. Don't know what's going on, don't know what to do.

Why? You know where I am going with this. The answer to why is that the fucking surgeon is focused on deciding whether a Porsche or a Ferrari makes more sense, and whether or not a vacation home in Mexico is a good investment.

The condition of my knee is an afterthought to this motherfucker.

Meanwhile I am missing beautiful weather and I am missing work. And I am mean, disgruntled and prone to violence.

Real life consequences are not relevant to American doctors. 

Golf is.