So, nineteen months ago, I had some sort of freak accident (in my sleep, since I don’t remember it!) and the result was a totally freakin mangled knee. I was unable to walk on it at all for almost a month and then after that month passed, I hobbled around like an elderly person (cane and all) for four months. My wonderful Insurance has some kind of lame-o age requirement for knee replacement, so I didn’t qualify, even though my Orthopedist recommended that treatment and even fought for it for almost a year.

So, for the last nineteen months, I have been dealing with random flare ups and major pain…and that’s what I’m dealing with tonight…

So let me explain my injury, since I know some of my family reads this and I’ve never really taken the time to explain it (with visual aides and all)…FYI - this is NOT my knee…I found the x-ray online and then added the squares to explain.

Ok, so here we go. See the red box in the center? That’s the joint. My injury (as best they can tell) started like this: the Femur (top bone) and Tibia (bottom, larger bone) jammed down into each other, creating a compression fracture. I’ve put purple circles around the two areas where the compression fractures are.

Then, they started radiating. So, where the purple circle on the left is, the fracture started radiating up along that green box, splintering my Femur. The purple circle on the right, started splintering down into the yellow box, causing my Tibia to splinter.

It’s fun times, I gotta tell you.

And, because I have a (self diagnosed) addictive personality - I have resisted taking the only drugs that really seem to take the edge off…and by that, I mean, the pain is constant - but it doesn’t hurt like hell if I take drugs…

This really does suck. It especially hurts right now, for some reason. Weather changes are real hard for me - which makes living in the desert really great with this kind of injury - but I sure have been in bed a lot this spring…and as you can tell by my previous post, I really don’t have time…to…well, to do anything but work.

So, that’s my knee injury in a nutshell.

Oh…and today, my knee is so swollen, it’s bigger around than my thigh…and I got some darn healthy thighs!