I should probably be writing about something important like all the unrest in the world and the general craziness of our society right now. I mean, it's out there, people. Take a look around. I know I should be writing about that but I can't. I can't because I am in pain. IN PAIN. And the pain is making my brain hurt and I can't think of anything other than the fact that I am in pain right now.
When I was 10 I got hit by a car. It was my friend's Dad coming home from work. He wasn't going very fast, it being a side street where children played. I was riding my bike around another friend's house and up and down their drive way without looking and without helmet. I mean, seriously, who wore a helmet back then? I shot out of the drive way between two parked cars and BOOM he hit me. Just hard enough to send me sailing over my handlebars and onto the pavement, landing on my left knee. I scraped most of the skin off of it that day and probably did some deeper damage but back then unless you had a limb hanging off or a noticeable bone protruding or you stopped breathing for more than a minute, you just didn't go to the ER! So my Mom scooped me off the road, told the neighbor she was sorry she had such an idiot kid like me and she took me home to give me the best mercurochrome treatment she could muster.
About ten years later, I started to notice that my left knee "acted up" once in a while. It would make crazy noises "snap, crackle and pop" in cold weather and sometimes have a low ache if I overused it or overindulged in salty foods. I cracked it up to growing pains and got on with life. In my 20's the pain got a little worse. Surely, it wasn't helped by my weight increase but I had more episodes of pain that lasted for longer times. I had to get it checked. The diagnosis? Arthritis brought on by the earlier trauma of that car accident. During my 30's and 40's I learned to keep the pain under control with over the counter anti-inflammatories and walking. But I was also compensating for the pain in the left leg and that was starting to take a told on the right. Sure as shooting, I now had arthritis in both knees.
So now I am in my 50s and my knees are wrecked. This winter has been the worst one ever. I've had physical therapy previously on my knees and I've even had cortisone shots. I go to acupuncture once a week and that helps a lot but last week was the coldest week ever and my left knee is killing me. Last night, it hurt so much that I could not sleep. Even pain relief meds aren't touching this. I fear it is time to look into a more permanent solution. So I've made an appointment at the orthopedic doc for this Friday. Hopefully I will get some answer and some sweet relief because I cannot go on like this! It hurts and, even though I have a fairly high level of tolerance for pain, this is really getting to me!
OUCH!!!!
No comments:
Post a Comment