jagienka | the official knee update

There have been facebook status updates & tweets about this, but now that I've had a fairly concrete diagnosis, I think it's time for the full story.

Sunday I went ice skating with bad_influence, catling42, and skimtony at the rink in Somerville. Wiped out a few times - mostly due to unsharpened skates at the beginning. It's amazing what a difference sharpened skates make. Seriously. Had a blast though. I mean, I crashed on my left knee once kinda hard to the point where I couldn't put any weight on it, but sat out for a bit and then could put weight on it, so went back into the ring. (Lather, rinse, repeat). Yes, this happened more than once.

Went to mass and dinner as usual Sunday night. By that point, I realized that straightening my leg completely or bending it more than 90 degrees was causing lots of pain. catling42 and I went to urgent care (she's my hospital buddy, obviously) and they put me on crutches and told me I definitely did something to it - mostlikely tore something. Went back to see a member of my PCP team on Monday who told me to not put any weight on it at all, told me to be good about taking anti-inflammatory drugs on a schedule because that was necessary. Got the 'you're not as young as you used to be, take care of your body' talk. Got scheduled for an ortho appointment 'stat'. Went to see ortho today (a different one than previously, but I like this one much better) - who's name is Lars! - and was told that luckily my ACL appears to be intact. I have, however, torn my MCL. Good news is, it will heal itself on its own. My meniscus is too acutely damaged at the moment to tell whether there's any permament damage there. So, I'm on crutches for another week or two. Should keep off it completely until the swelling goes down & it looks normal again. Have appointments for PT in the meantime. See the ortho again in six weeks to re-evaluate the situation and see if it requires surgery or not.

Can I just say I'm not looking forward to a winter storm arriving tomorrow on the first day of classes while I'm on crutches? Yeah, not so much.

In good news, told my brother everything on the gender front and he didn't even miss a beat. I love him.