Splat! Part 5

When I stepped into the orthopedics clinic, it was sort of a big deal. The last time I’d been there, I’d arrived unglamorously in a wheelchair (“Vroom! Vroom!”), and now I was proudly walking up to the receptionist like a champ, albeit a bit stiffly and sorely. Still, I felt a little like I was back in college, waiting for a big exam to be handed back so I could see my grade. Would I pass my MRI? Or would I flunk out of Healing 101 and learn that my knee was a proverbial ticking timebomb?

After doing the requisite amount of people-watching in the waiting room, I was shuttled into a small examination room and immediately abandoned. As I amused myself by looking blankly at the wall, I kept imagining an automated voice saying, “Your expected wait time is anywhere from 1 to 8 billion minutes.” Eventually, I realized that the walls of the room were quite thin, and I could hear everything that was being said out in the hallway. Shifting my waiting strategy, I began to listen for any interesting tidbits that might pertain to me, perhaps even give me a hint as to if I was going to be receiving good or bad news:

Possible Bad News: “I’ll be there in a minute. I just gotta duck in here and tell this poor sucker we’re going to have to amputate.”

Possible Bad News: “Boy, I sure hope this guy has one heck of an insurance plan!”

Possible Good News: “I love my job! Not only do I get to tell this gentleman he’s going to be healthier than ever, I also get to provide him with the secret formula for hair regrowth!”

Eventually, my doctor came into the room. After some cursory introductions, he sat down at a computer and pulled up what he said were my MRI results. To a layperson such as myself, this appeared to be a 3-D model of something that vaguely resembled a cabbage, which could easily be rotated and viewed on the screen at just about any conceivable angle. Not that I had any proof that it was actually my knee, mind you. I mean, it’s not like your parts are labeled or anything. It could have just as easily been a 3-D representation of a koala’s hamstring and I’d have had no clue. (Assuming, of course, that koalas have hamstrings.)

“Now take a look here,” the doctor said, and I leaned in close to the screen and squinted knowledgably, much like I do at work when somebody is explaining something and I don’t have the foggiest idea as to what’s going on. “You see this here,” he said, pointing to a random spot on the koala hamstring.

“Yup,” I said confidently.

“You see how it’s white?”

“I sure do!” True to his word, the random spot on the screen was indeed white! Now we were getting somewhere!

“Yeah, that shouldn’t be that color at all. That’s where your kneecap bounced off.”

So, as it turns out, at some point during that fateful night I actually dislocated my knee! Luckily, the freewheeling party responsible for this jailbreak, my crazy, ol’ kneecap, had been smart enough to relocate itself back soon after seeing there was nothing fun for it to do in its new premises. Now, while a dislocation wasn’t ideal, I was happy to learn that nothing had been torn. Plus, the dislocation helped to explain a lot, such as why walking around hadn’t been much of an option for several days, and I began to feel better about all of the self-imposed drama I’d heaped on myself. Two sprains and a dislocation!! Now that was something to talk about:

Annoying Guy Trying to Show Off: “I had a pretty bad hamstring pull once. It hurt like heck, but I still managed to finish the game."

Me: “Ankle sprain, knee sprain, kneecap dislocation, which affected both my right and left legs! I couldn't even walk! Read ‘em and weep, buddy!”

Sure, it wouldn’t hold much water with the Torn ACL or Ruptured Achilles clubs, but there would still be occasions where it’d prove useful.

Anyway, after asking a few useless questions, just to make the doctor think I was somewhat intelligent, I was told that everything would hopefully heal on its own. Until then, I’d be provided with a knee brace to help and stabilize things. With that said, the doctor disappeared out into the mist, on his way to rotate cabbages with his next patient.

The brace I was given was the equivalent of getting Coke-bottle glasses for your vision, to the point where it easily could have been mistaken from some sort of medieval torture device. It was large, cumbersome, and had random straps sticking out all over the place. I’m pretty sure I visibly flinched when I saw it for the first time, and my mind quickly went into overdrive: “Put him in the knee brace,” I could hear some ancient king sneering. “NOOOOOOOO!!!!” the prisoner would yell. “Anything but the knee brace!”

But it worked. Once I managed to pull it on, fasten all 47 straps, and get used to my left leg now weighing 30 pounds more than my right, I realized it really did help to support my knee, and that I could now walk more confidently than before! Elated at this discovery, I power-strode out of the clinic, knowing it was just a matter of time before things would all heal up and everything would be back to normal. Sure, the brace would make it so I wouldn’t be wearing leggings anytime soon, but that was just something I’d have to live with.

And that, finally, might be the end of the story.