I Kneed to be More Careful
These first few posts will be an overview of how I got to where I am today. After that I’ll take a deeper dive into specific times and adventures and see what I can unearth. If I’m feeling it, I may even come back and link those to the proper spots in these overview posts.
I think I must have been throwing that disc, but lord knows how.
As I settled into life in Greensboro, sports became a huge focus. I found a new tae kwon do gym and trained there as much as I could, played basketball at the Y a couple days a week, and most importantly got involved in the ultimate community through pickup and leagues.
I’d played ultimate since 1985, but it turns out it was a very casual blend of the game. Now I was seeing that there could be strategy and a lot more fun to be had with proper structure. After a couple years I became the organizer of pickup in Greensboro and took teams to tournaments and began to immerse myself in the ultimate world. Bad weather was the bane of my existence - I hated missing ultimate.
By 2004 I was playing ultimate 3 or 4 times a week, going to tae kwon do 3 or 4 times a week and even running with a friend to keep her in shape for cross-country. And, again, I had little muscle and finally this became a problem. See, muscles aren’t just for looking good, they actually help your body work correctly.
My left knee really started to hurt over the summer when I was doing something athletic every day. I went to the doctor, who sent me to a PT, who said I had “jumpers knee”, which meant I was stressing the patellar tendon by all the activity. My quad muscles should have been taking the brunt of the workouts, but they were not strong enough so my patellar tendon was compensating.
He prescribed a new drug called “Vioxx” which I took and suddenly felt great! No pain at all, and I could play ultimate at full speed and life was wonderful! Then I noticed I wasn’t sleeping and examined the drug more closely and saw a side effect was insomnia, so I stopped taking it. The pain came back, but worse since all the drug had done was mask it so I did more damage when I couldn’t feel the pain.
Shortly after this, Vioxx was taken off the market due to fear of increased heart attacks in users. Nice.
The PT started me on exercise treatment and I was hoping I could avoid surgery. It was not to be, however, and I finally scheduled a procedure for April 2005. In preparation for this, I switched from a stick shift to automatic car and bought a ground-floor condo so I wouldn’t have to deal with stairs.
Before they put me under for surgery, the doctor told me they were going to repair my patellar tendon and do some scoping to remove scar tissue under my kneecap. As an aside, he said if it looked like it needed it, he’d do a “lateral release” on my kneecap to make it track straighter. I trusted that he knew what to do and didn’t worry about it. They put me under and the next thing I knew I was awake and loopy.
I was given another painkiller to take, and sent home with instructions to stay off the leg for a week. It was a fun week for sure, but family and friends stopped by to keep me company and my tae kwon do class even sent someone to pick me up in a van so I could go to our black belt ceremony. Yes - I’d gotten a second black belt just before surgery and the ceremony was two days after.
Pain set in after 24 hours, and I took one dose of the prescribed drug but didn’t like how it made me feel. Stuck with ibuprofen after that, and it did a fine job. Turns out the painkiller was a new-ish drug called OxyContin. Good grief, it’s enough to make me never trust a prescription again.
After the first week I had to go to PT to start getting movement back. The doctor had told me that I’d be back to full range of motion and able to run after about 6 months. The PT looked at my chart and just about laughed when I told him that. A year was the prognosis, because of the lateral release. That’s a pretty major procedure, it turns out. I was not happy to hear this at all. But what could I do?
I started therapy.
