A WORD ABOUT MY MENISCUS

I have words about pretty much everything else in my life, why not my meniscus?

Seems there's a possibility that my meniscus is, as my students would say, "all jacked up."

I went to my doctor's yesterday to finally see if I could figure out why I'm hobbling around like a 90 year old woman.

The conversation between myself and Dr. B went something like this.

"Hi, what seems to be the problem today?"

"My knee. That's the problem."

"Uh. What exactly is wrong with your knee?"

Pulling up my pant leg, "It's really swollen, and it hurts and I've finally just decided I need to figure out what is wrong with it."

"Okay ..." He looks at the, very obviously, swollen knee and then looks at the other not at all swollen knee. "What did you do to it?"

"Well, Dr. B, that is a very good question. You see, I'm not entirely sure."

Dr. B looks up at me with a look somewhere between wonder and utter puzzlement. I'm choosing to believe that he was dazzled by my blue eyes. He just doesn't understand the beauty that is me!

"It could have been when I fell on it causing fluid to gather in there ... gosh it was a number of years ago ... 7 ... 8 ... 9 ... 10 ... I don't know. A long time ago ..."

Did his brow just furrow a bit more?

"Who knows. I'm on my feet all day."

"When did it start bothering you?" He's yanking and pulling on my leg, and it sort of hurts.

"I don't want to tell you." He looks up at me again, slightly alarmed. "It started right after the Black Cat Chase."

He starts to say something, then acts like he's swallowing it. Then he makes this weird sound through his nose, highly unprofessional, I might add, and half-way squeaks, "That was Halloween!"

"Yes, I am well aware of this, Dr. B, but in my defense, I was just sort of hoping it would go away."

It was at this point, he rolled his eyes.

"Well, I could take x-rays, but I think what you've got is some sort of tear in the meniscus. I'm going to call in an appointment to an orthopedic surgeon. I want him to look at this."

I'm thinking ... sounds expensive!

I was relaying the conversation to my parents later on that night, and my mother had this to say, "Well, so it sounds like you really didn't need me there at all. Dr. B. did a pretty good job on his own of shaming you for not going in to see him earlier about that knee?"

"Yeah, pretty much. Although, in my defense, I rested it back in October thinking that it would just go away."

Silence.

"Mom? You're rolling your eyes at me, aren't you?"

"You know me too well ..."

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