My test results are in....

Gee, all that anxiety, all that waiting... for nothing. My MRI showed nothing wrong with my knee. This may seem like good news. Not to me. You see, I need a reason why my knee hurts to bend, why it is swollen, why when I move in certain ways I get a searing pain deep inside my knee. 

It is feeling a little better today. In fact I was down to one crutch, which made carrying things so much easier. Anyway, my doctor seems to think that an MRI is just a picture. If he took a picture of me with my eyes closed, he wouldn't be able to tell what color they were. But I still have brown eyes. (Does this analogy make sense?)

 So, the next step is a shot of cortisone. The doctor left the room to prepare the shot (or so I thought). The assistant (nurse? lackey?) brought in the needle, prep pad, Band-Aid etc.  And so I waited for the doc to come back in to expertly administer the shot. And I waited. Patients were coming, being seen/treated, and released from the rooms  all around me. And still I waited. Finally the gal came back and looked startled to see me still sitting there. She eyed the needle (which had been staring at me from across the room for about 15 minutes now) and bolted. 

Soon another nice woman came in and explained that my doctor was suddenly called to surgery and his associate would be in shortly to give the injection. And as promised in walked a much taller doctor joking how he was my original doctor only that he had grown. Ha ha ha. He asked me the problem and as I answered he began to prep my knee, interrupting me as though he had never asked a question. Ah, bedside manner! The coolest part was that he took this awesome spray that shot out really cold fluid and numbed the heck out of my knee (and a portion of my shin as it trickled down). He then placed the needle in which didn't hurt at all and injected the liquid- now that felt a little uncomfortable as the cortisone spread through my knee, but then it stopped.

So, now I am to call the doctor (the shorter one) on Monday and let him know how my knee feels. If I feel better, great the cortisone worked (?). If not, he'll scope it and see what the heck is going on in there.  If the shot worked, why and what was wrong? Will I hurt it again as soon as I start working out again? I don't want a bandage on a big problem, I want the problem fixed. It's not as though I have a cortisone deficiency in my knee joint. That's the problem with medicine today. It's not really about curing. It's about making you feel better until you need to come back and have something else done. Why do doctor's get paid so much for having no idea what the heck is going on? I mean, it's kind of like a meteorologist. He'll say, "Well, it might rain." Then, " Oops, maybe tomorrow." And the doc says, "Oh, that medicine didn't work? Here try this one ( by the way, the pharmaceutical company which supplies that product just sent me and my adorable family on a trip to the Bahamas.)."  Ooh, sounding bitter or is that just the aftertaste of my pain medicine? 

You may be wondering if the the cortisone is working. I think it is a little. I have more mobility in my knee, I can bend it further than earlier today. I walked up the steps normally a few times and went down a few steps normally (although quite gingerly). The swelling is still there. I'm still walking with a limp without the brace. The good news is I may be able to drive tomorrow. It still hurts and that's the bad part. I really want to jump and get down on the floor to play with the kids or to look for that shoe I tossed under the bed. Maybe even play a little Tiger Woods Golf on the wii.  We'll see what happens and I'll keep you posted. (ha ha, get it... posted? It's a blog, and you post....)