Just how bad they were and how much better they are now

I got my images of my knees today on a disc. I compared them to the ones I had from last year. It's like night and day. No wonder they feel so much better. The ones at the top are after the surgery, the ones at the bottom show the pre-surgery arthritis. It was definitely time. There was no cartilage at all. Since I'm a month out from surgery today, physical therapy was mostly functional testing today, so I'm hurting a bit, maybe a 4/10, but lately I've been a 0 or a 1, 2 tops, even with the range-of-motion bike, which is pretty amazing, especially since I was regularly an 8. Whoo-hoo!

Hope I can do this

Just 26 more pounds and I can have my knee surgery. If I can lose that in three months (by my next appointment) I might be able to do it at the end of the year. I'm at what I think is called Stage 4 (the worst) end-stage osteoarthritis of the knee, meaning it's bone-on-bone without much of any cartilage. The gel shots helped for a while but haven't held the last year or so and we've needed to do cortisone at the three-month mark to supplement it (insurance only pays for the gel every 6 months and 2 days). I have been in so much pain that even with ibuprofen, I've been at my desk with pain throbbing enough that I can't hardly think. If I could have the first surgery late in the year, I wouldn't pay anything out-of-pocket. So I have a lot of incentive to lose the weight soon and make it a 100-lb. loss. It's doable. Until the last couple of weeks I was losing about 2 lbs. a week, and it hasn't gone up or anything. But for the surgery, my BMI has to be under 40. If I lose 26 lbs. it'll be at 39.9. Wish me luck!

Images for dramatic effect. Hey, it's not a HIPAA violation if I share my own knee images. 🙂 Besides, many of you are either medical folks or have gone through similar stuff yourselves.

I understand why my break wasn't bad enough for surgery

I finally got out my old external DVD-ROM drive, as my laptop is new enough it just has an SD card slot for removable storage, and put in the CD that has my x-rays on it. I understand why, while it hurts and is making me limp, I can still bear weight on a broken ankle. Yes, it is a medial malleolar fracture, which is a broken bone in the ankle joint on the inside of the ankle. I had one on my right ankle when I got hit by a car years ago, but that was due to a lot more force and a different subtype of fracture. It took me a little while to see the broken part on this one...it's just a little bit on the end of the tibia, which isn't all that integral to bearing weight and doesn't require surgery. Here's the image, with the broken bit on the left tip of bone:

That doesn't mean it doesn't hurt, of course, but it is much milder than my fracture of the right ankle eight years ago. And thankfully, being on the left, it doesn't affect my driving. I am taking the boot off and just leaving an ACE bandage wrapping, sock, and shoe on while driving, but I drive an automatic so the left foot is not used.

I went back to work today, had a very productive day, and despite being physically tired after walking all over the place in a boot, I feel good about going back.

Now for something lighter: did you know common office sticky tape emits x-rays?

From Wired:

Gallery: Take an X-Ray With Your Office Sticky Tape

It has been known for a long time that sticky tape emits visible light when peeled in a dark room (try it!). But researchers at UCLA have also discovered that peeling sticky tape in a vacuum sends out pulses of X-rays along with visible light, though the actual mechanism that causes the X-rays to form is not yet understood.

I had to look this up

because neither my podiatry office nor the radiology office over at St Joseph East automatically use lead aprons.

Is gonadal shielding necessary?

The answer seems to be no, given improvements in x-ray machines these days and the very low doses received, especially when doing exposures on the extremities. I feel a little better.

(I know, I'm unlikely to reproduce, but still, what can I say, it's a concern fueled by years of lead aprons.)

I have been poked, prodded, and positioned

spending about five hours today seeing to my knee, which I hurt in that fall on Monday. It was complicated by being workman's compensation rather than my normal insurance, so there was a lot of paperwork (and I'm not even counting the calls I made ahead of time.) Dr Nesbitt noticed (I hadn't) that I was bruised along the whole front of my lower leg, too (it was a very light discolouration), so he ordered views of my knee, my tibia, and my fibula. He also gave me a prescription for Darvocet for night-time, since it's been bothering me then, but to be honest I may just be okay with ibuprofen. It's not that painful as long as I stay off it--although I have to admit, after going through the exam and testing the range of motion, it did hurt quite a lot, and then after being given assisted yoga in getting the x-rays and then walking a long trek back to the car around some construction, I was ready to go home and rest for a bit.

That's been my day so far. Now I'm getting ready to go do laundry, do notes, and work on character sheets, so I'll be off both foot and knee for that. Then there's the big grocery run I take a friend on when he's paid, and that's definitely time for the boot. I'd hoped to get some stuff at home taken care of, like the dishes and some of the paper that's lying around, or even watch a DVD that was given to me weeks ago, but I didn't expect the medical stuff to take quite so long (I was figuring maybe three hours. Silly me.) Oh, well.