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I’m bad at being bad

I went bowling with a group of 10 other people last night and we had fun. As most people should know, an essential element of having fun bowling is mocking and taunting the other players and there were plenty of opportunities. Unfortunately… well, I’ll get to that.

We went for four rounds (some people bowed out for a round or two when their hands and wrists started getting tired—the rest of us didn’t ask for any details). The first three were like normal bowling: try and get the highest score possible. We ended up doing a ranking system according to those scores so the people who did the best moved to the leftmost lane and the crappiest players ended up on the right.

The first round established the initial rankings, which was awesome. Not because I did exceptionally well, but because I had a massive comeback in the last few frames. One guy thought I’d be stuck in the middle until I pointed at the scoreboard and he realized that I had a pair of strikes in the 8th and 9th frames. I then picked up the turkey (three strikes in a row), got nine pins and cleaned up the spare in the 10th frame. Yeah, definitely a massive comeback.

So I moved over to the left lane for a game, then proceeded to do crappy enough to move back to the middle for the third (thankfully, not crappy enough to slide all the way down, but still…). That might not have been so bad considering it was the “Groundhog Day” lane—if the ball went into the gutter, it wouldn’t always register the roll. There was at least one time when someone got four rolls in a frame because he put two balls in the gutter and later got another chance to pick up a spare the same way.

But after those first three games were done, we opted to try something different: put up the bumpers and get the lowest score possible. I sucked at it. And by “sucked”, I mean I rolled a 133. If I remember right, that was my highest score of the night. But aside from that debacle, at least I had the consolation of screwing up someone else’s game.

Michael Amiri (and I’m using his name because he had it coming) was in reach of a sub-50 game in the last two frames, but I owed him. Two days earlier, we were both working on a shoot for The WaZoo! Show that involved Nerf guns with “lasers” for aiming. The lasers were part of the sketch; the Nerf darts inside the gun were not. Nor was the fact that while we were standing around between scenes, he shot me in the jaw. So I owed him.

Consequently, in the 9th frame, he was about to roll the ball down the lane when I made a comment about him being used to not scoring. I didn’t hear him laugh, but I saw seven pins fall down as well as his middle finger multiple times during the rest of the night. Remember what I said about mocking and taunting? Hell yeah…

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The official diagnosis is… (._.)?

Yep, it’s a head-scratcher, all right. I thought getting the scans done would provide some answers. I was wrong.

I got an appointment with the specialist on Wednesday, so I picked up the MRI results from the clinic on Tuesday afternoon to bring to my appointment. (What’s funny is that they told me I was supposed to sign for the results—maybe I have a trustworthy face, but the person at the desk ended up leaving the form paper-clipped to the envelope instead of taking it off for me to sign.)

So I brought it home and curiosity got the best of me, so I opened it up to take a look. I opted not to look at the images on the CD and instead read through the report from the radiologist. Depending on your viewpoint, the news could be interpreted in two ways. First: it didn’t show anything. My knee looks pretty much awesome. That’s good. However, that also doesn’t explain what’s wrong with it. It may look really nice on the MRI, but I know there’s something pushing against the back that’s there in the right (surgically altered) knee and not the left.

When I went to visit Dr. Lewis (the specialist and knee surgeon who cut me open the first time), I told them that the news was mixed: it didn’t show anything, so it didn’t provide any explanations. They ended up having me get some x-rays done (they wanted me to change into some of their cheap linen shorts, but I’ve gone through this stuff enough to wear soccer shorts underneath my jeans). When Dr. Lewis looked at the results of the MRI and the x-rays… not a clue what the problem is.

I shouldn’t say that. There might be a problem, but it might not be a problem and it still probably wouldn’t explain what’s wrong. When he looked at all the scans, my knee looks really healthy. There are no obvious problems, though on the inner part of my knee, there’s a lighter part that might indicate something wrong. It’s not light enough to show a tear in the meniscus, but it might be something wrong. He figured that if we scope it, there’s a 50/50 chance that he’ll find anything.

Which means we have a potential issue, which probably wouldn’t affect the back of my knee regardless. Truth is, one of the options he gave me was to just ignore it and go back to playing soccer again, see if something happens. The other options he gave me were a cortisone shot (which wouldn’t do much more than relieve any pain I’m feeling… and it doesn’t really hurt, but it’s annoying) and arthroscopic surgery to see how the 50/50 odds pan out.

Thus, I opted to have him take a peek on October 31st. (As as added bonus, if I’m feeling whacked out from painkillers, I can answer the door and scare all the little kids looking for candy.) Trust me, ignoring it was reeeeeeeally tempting, but there were two reasons why I decided to have Dr. Lewis poke around inside my knee.

First off, the curiosity factor. I could let it go, but that wouldn’t provide me with any answers, especially the deal with the back of my knee. Ignorance may be bliss, but whatever this thing doesn’t like being ignored very much. The second (and more important) is that one of the signs of a tear in the meniscus is the knee locking up. If it suddenly stops moving, it might be pinching the tear and the knee stops to prevent any further damage. Something like that, anyway.

Looking back a couple months ago… or maybe more than a couple months… my knee did just that. I was running across the field and it locked up as I was striding forward. Again, it didn’t hurt and seemed like an inconvenience at the time, but if it’s a sign of a larger problem… yeah, I want to have Dr. Lewis take a look and see what’s going on.

So on Halloween, there are two likely possibilities. The first is that he won’t find anything and I’ll be stuck with (._.)? for a long, long time. The second is that there’ll be a small tear or something wrong and he might have to cut away some of the meniscus. That’s not necessarily a good thing—I’ve got a limited amount and it won’t grow back—but at least it won’t cause me any problems in the future (I hope).

In the meantime, it’s tempting to play soccer for the next couple weeks until surgery, but I’m totally out of shape at this point. I haven’t been on the field since April and haven’t had a decent amount of exercise since then. I guess maybe helping to move lots of furniture and stuff like that might help, but that doesn’t provide much cardiovascular exercise, so if I try running around, it wouldn’t be long before I’d be a somewhat muscular wheezing puddle of Shawn out on the field. Probably not such a good idea, but we’ll see what happens.

In the meantime… I just hope the only confusing things I have to deal with in the future are based entirely on Managerial Finance. And in theory, I’ll be able to find answers to those.

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The results are in, but…

The specialist said on Monday that the MRI results would be ready in 2-3 business days. The radiologist at the clinic didn’t look at them until Thursday evening, which is probably why I didn’t get a phone call about the results until I called them on Friday afternoon. By the time I finally talked to one of their nurses on the phone, it was too late in the day (and thus too late in the week unless the front desk is open on Saturday) to take the next step: set up an appointment with the orthopedist.

Turns out I still don’t know what the problem is. The scan shows that the ACL graft was fine and there isn’t a Baker’s cyst. It looks like the meniscus in my knee is swollen, but the doc doesn’t know why. I’d say we’re back to Square 1, but since we know two things that aren’t the problem, I’ll say we’re at Square 1A. That’s not very comforting. So now I have to sit back and wait until next week at the earliest to get some idea of what’s wrong and how to make it right again. I’m generally okay with waiting, but this is getting ridiculous.

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I fell asleep in the MRI tube again

I guess this story stretches back awhile. Not sure how much of it I may have told before, so I’ll start from the beginning (at least of this chapter).

I was playing soccer after my car accident for a couple weeks (after a short break—I’m not that crazy) and at one point, I was running and felt a sudden flareup in the back of my right knee. Yes, the one that’s surgically repaired. I subbed out of the game immediately and was able to hobble over to the side of the field under my own power, but I was able to do that when I tore my ACL the first time.

That was my big concern: I might have retorn it. Over the next few days, I’d feel pressure against the back of my knee sometimes. Without the ligament, there’s no support to keep it from hyperextending and it felt like that’s what was happening. I scheduled an appointment with the knee specialist as soon as I could and spent the next week being almost positive that I’d need surgery again. Continue reading “I fell asleep in the MRI tube again”