How did that happen? It felt like mid-summer with temps soaring high into the 80s but it’s suddenly cooling off a bit, now that June is almost upon us.
On May 20th we were down at the dock and a goose sauntered by…
Lester, always so happy…
We’ve seen this huge gaggle of geese a few times now – i think there are about 23 goslings! That’s lots of goslings to take care of.
Saturday, May 22nd we took a morning kayak trip down to the end of Long Bay again. This new dock used to be a very old and rotting dock, and it looks so nice now.
Up there, the yellow flowers mark the end of Long Bay.
I guess I enjoy it because it’s like a secret little cove. Here’s a short video of what it looks like.
On our way out of the bay we saw this small goose family.
I like all the trees hanging over the water.
And that’s photos for right now. Tomorrow I hope to post yet again because it’s going to be chilly so I won’t feel the need to do as much.
Because yeah, I’ve been doing a lot even though I got an MRI the week after I went to the Ortho and that was a very weird thing – the person doing it asked what kind of music I wanted to listen to and I said “jazz” so I had these earphones on and they had me lie down on this plank with my leg secured in it and a weight on top of my leg so it’d be very still. The woman said it’d take 2o-30 minutes because they’d take several images but might have to re-do them.
So then she left the room and I slid into the MRI machine, except really only my leg was in there but OH MY GOD IT WAS SO LOUD.
It seemed ridiculous that she’d asked about my music preference because it sounded like they were doing very loud construction right there. The woman said each image would take from three to five minutes and sometimes at the end of each one there’d be an additional even louder pounding drilling construction sound which sounded like it was right underneath me.
And very faintly, underneath it all, there was the sound of jazz. Probably. I’m sure she mentioned that it was Pandora, and sometimes there was an ad but I had no idea what they could have possibly been advertising.
I did my best to lie perfectly still and focus on deep breathing and after a bit my leg really started to hurt but I kept breathing through it and it was a little bit restful just because I was lying down. But at the same time deafening.
A few days later they called to tell me that yes indeed I have a torn meniscus. It’s weird because that’s exactly what Kevin had many years ago…2007, maybe?
I had to go in and see the orthopedic doctor who is going to do the surgery. I’d read up on torn meniscus – it’s a cushion around your knee, and there’s one on either side, and I read that they could sew it up. But the resident who first examined me said that they only do that for young athletes. If you’re over 40, they shave the torn part off.
I just feel that shaving things off can’t be a good thing. Except, say, my inner thighs…
So this is where it gets slightly terrifying. Many years ago Kevin tore his meniscus at work, tripping over some big exposed plug in the floor, so it was a big impact. The doctor he went to acted like it wouldn’t be so bad, but we both have memories of him being in a whole lot of pain afterwards, for a very long time. He’d been thinking about starting a fencing school after retiring, and he was very close to retiring, but because the doctor ended up cutting out 70% of his meniscus he can’t lunge, and if you can’t lunge, you can’t fence. He also can’t run anymore.
So as I’m typing thing it’s making me think that yeah, maybe I won’t be able to run after this. That would be a drag. But maybe it won’t be so bad, and I also know that this doctor I’m seeing is really, really good – he replaced both hips and both knees of a friend whose husband trained the doctor who will be working on me.
Kevin’s doctor, on the other hand, might have removed an excessive amount of his meniscus. When he was a kid he crashed his bike badly and Kevin thinks his meniscus was probably torn then and formed scar tissue and the doctor went in and removed the scar tissue. So that would be bad, not to mention incompetent. There were also some kind of shady-sounding things about his recovery – he did physical therapy but then the doctor told him it wasn’t working, so he wouldn’t be getting any more of that.
Anyway. We did do a huge amount of hiking in Wales and Ireland, but that was several years after his injury. Hopefully it won’t be several years before I can do things again. If not running, then at least hiking and biking and all the weights I’ve been doing a lot more of.
My surgery is June 24th, which seems like a long time to wait. A couple of days ago my knee was feeling better, and I started thinking that maybe I didn’t really need the surgery, but then I did a little too much something and then pain increased. I’m still doing some yard work – it’s amazing how much I can do by scooching around on the ground. I managed to do some weeding and putting down mulch in that manner.
But then I power-washed the deck for a couple of hours a couple of days ago and then an hour yesterday. My knee just feels weird. But today I managed to sit on the ground and put out all the shells that line my front walkway and that made me happy, and I coaxed Kevin into bringing most of my palms down from the upstairs and I arranged them. I even transplanted some shoots of plants that have been sitting on my dining room table for a few months now and have been driving me crazy. I sat on the little deck, digging around in the pots and making a huge mess. But now, the knee isn’t so happy about so much activity.
Ok, sorry, blah blah blah, what am I going to be like in 20 years when I have more serious age-related issues?
But right now I need to ask the people at the orthopedic center if it could possibly tear again, and what about the other knee? And I worry about having anesthesia which I’ve never had before, and what if I’m in pain for a long time afterwards? It’s summer and I need to garden.
Deep breaths.
ok then,
mrs. getting older all the time hughes (but consider the alternative).