The Pain of Laziness

Several years ago, nine or ten, I don't remember, I had knee surgery. Nothing serious, just a little tear in my meniscus, requiring a small piece to be removed. I also had some bone spurs on the back of my kneecap that had to be shaved down. Again, nothing serious. Oh sure, it hurt like hell to walk around, or drive, and stairs were an abysmal experience, but I could walk so I didn't figure it for too much of a bad thing. The surgery wasn't a big deal, just two small incisions and they went in with the little tube-y things to fix it all up. I didn't even need crutches afterwards.

What I did need was physical therapy, the idea being that if the muscles around my kneecap were stronger, they'd better hold the kneecap in place, thereby lessening the threat of future discomfort. I wasn't any smarter nine years ago than I am now, so naturally, I didn't go through with the physical therapy.

Fast forward nine years and my knee is back to hurting. A fair bit actually. Walking hurts, driving hurts and standing while doing Rock Band's vocal tour for an hour and a half definitely hurts, as my knee can now attest to. I went to the orthopedic guy today and luckily, there's no additional damage to the knee, just some tendinitis. While he was working my knee joint to determine my level of mobility he was poking and prodding, asking me how much it hurt, which, honestly, wasn't that much. Then he pressed down on my tendon to simulate some of the forces placed on the tendon throughout the day, and I swear that instead of pushing with his thumb, he instead pushed with a rusty railroad spike because I damn near jumped off the table, and I was lying down. Just thinking about it hurts like hell.

So, as a result, I'm back to where I was nine years ago, namely needing physical therapy. The idea is that I can retrain my knee so that the force placed on the tendon is lessened. We'll see. I also have drugs, however they're not the kind that makes you see flaming blue monkeys. At least I haven't seen any yet. Thankfully it's still early.

So, let this be a lesson to all of you. When your surgeon tells you that you need physical therapy, go ahead and get it. Granted, it's probably a lesson you don't need to learn unless you're an idiot like me, but statistically speaking, there's a good chance you are. It ain't personal, it's just statistics.