You may remember that I hurt my knee on my last archaeological survey. Something inside it has gone wrong. The medical phrase for that is "internal derangement." Really. Specifically, Mike the friendly physical therapist thinks that the most likely cause of my problem is a small tear in the meniscus cartilage that lies on top of the tibia bone and keeps the femur from scraping it when you bend your knee. It's not really that problematic except when I use it extensively; most of the time it doesn't even hurt unless I squat down for more than 30 seconds or climb something fairly steep. Still, it needs fixing. I can’t spend the rest of my life avoiding hills and stairs or walking more than 1 mile at a time.
After an hour and a half’s wait at the doctor’s office this morning (!), I was told that I am going to be referred for an MRI of my knee and to see an orthopedic specialist. I hope it helps. I worry that whatever is wrong in there isn’t bad enough to be obvious and I’m just going to have to live with it. That probably isn’t true, considering that I can consistently make my knee click in this really odd way by bending my leg toward my butt. I think what I’m really worried about is what Mike told me--that if it is a cartilage tear, the only two treatment options are leaving it alone until it heals by itself (two years potentially) or surgery. I like neither of those.
In the meantime, I continue to make poor use of my time off: spending too much time writing blog posts instead of looking for a place to live, for instance...
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