Day 5

Everything happens for a reason. Things have a way of working out. What you truly need will somehow be provided for you. None of these generalized well-wishing statements hold much value in my beliefs about the way life works. I do believe strongly in the mind-body connection and I believe that the events of our lives can to some extent be affected by a positive and welcoming approach. But I also know that bad things quite often happen to good people and vice-versa and typically no amount of focused spiritual karmic voodoo makes any difference.

That said, as if she were somehow listening in on my self-generated psychosis last night regarding the strength of the graft attachments, Dr. Stone’s assistant surgeon called at about 1pm today “just to check up on me”. Yep, on Sunday afternoon. She is a wonderfully positive and engaging person and based on the things she has said is also a strong believer in the interaction between mind and body. I explained to her what had happened but to my relief she did not at all share my concerns. She assured me that the graft and its attachments are strong and that at this point it would basically require a force similar to that which caused the original injury in order to create new damage. The same was true of the repaired meniscus. Apparently re-injury fear, even heaping irrational levels of the stuff, is very common in recovery. “Stay positive” was the closing bit of advice she left me.

At 4pm, perhaps, I wondered, at the request of the assistant surgeon, Dr. Stone himself called. He too assured me that the ACL was fine. “It’s locked in there”, he said. Well alrighty then.

I’m really not one to question good news, but I have to say that for the most part this “ACL is safe” theory does not make sense to me. To make matters worse, I naively believe that there are few physical concepts that I cannot comprehend if they are just explained to me. Surely, everything is relative and with enough force, anything can and will fail eventually. But given that I applied very little force to my knee and given that my two doctors believe the reconstructed ACL is reasonably difficult to harm, eventually I have to abandon my own terribly underinformed, logic-based thought processes and just go with what I am told.

It is at this point that I also have to begin to admit that I am carrying around a rather generous load of ignorance. Despite my research efforts on the ACL over the past two months and my typical lack of difficulty understanding the basics of bio-mechanics, I still cannot quite get my arms around the function of the ACL. I can almost get a general feel for its hyperextension support by studying the ACL in diagrams, but I don’t at all see how it provides rotational stability. I also have nearly no awareness of how to protect or even favor the meniscus or any of the other major components. In fact there is only one thing about the knee that I have determined for certain. As simple as it looks from the outside, the internal elements make up one exceptionally complicated system.

A quick update on pain levels. My digestive system has finally registered an official complaint over the working conditions of the past week. I’m not nauseous but everything I’ve eaten since this morning has been in a rather big hurry to leave the building. It could be the antibiotics (which are now finished) or the pain meds, or just something I ate. Regardless, the result is that I decided to skip my 2pm feeding of Toradol and now, nearly four hours later, pains that have been gone for days have begun to reappear with renewed intensity. The most severe ache is coming from the upper two-thirds of my shin, likely inflammation of the periosteum (the thin outer layer of the bone). Nothing catastrophic, thankfully, but overall it is considerably worse than yesterday. If nothing else, it's a good measure of where I really am in terms of unfiltered pain. Apparently there is still plenty to go around.