WHY ME?!
This may or may not be a complete pity-post, but I pity myself here. Well, it's less pity and more like complete bone-chilling fear. Let me start out with a little bit of background for you guys. When I was eleven I grew a foot and one inch in 13 months, scared the crap out of my mom, and the main reason I am a six foot giant today. Now that is all good and dandy, but there are bound to be problems resulting from a child growing that fast. And there were.
It's only been five years of pain building up in my knee.
You see, when I grew so fast so quickly, I managed to tear the meniscus in my left knee. Again, usually that is not such a huge ordeal, except I managed to tear my meniscus horizontally, the hardest way to heal. For those of you who know nothing about anatomy like myself, the meniscus is something in your knee that holds it together. Don't ask me to specify I don't know. What I do know is that it's painful. This tear has taken me out of my normal, active, lifestyle. Normally, I really wouldn't mind sitting on my lazy butt and playing Mizahar all day, but that would just make things worse. God, I'm a teenager! I'm supposed to be allowed to run around and be crazy! Not sitting down clutching my knee in pain! D:
Anyhoo, I got an MRI two years ago which showed the tear, however the doctor thought it was just a cyst. I was too young to have a meniscus tear without some traumatic injury, especially a horizontal one. And so we didn't do jack shit about the pain for two years.
And then I moved in with my mom. So my mom was being a mom and she wasn't going to put up with some uppity New England doctor's bullshit. So we went to another doctor, who had me get another MRI scan. I actually got this MRI hours before I made my vlog, which was why I made a comment about it. I'll tell you about that now.
I went to the MRI place and they told me that they would be putting dye and a saline solution in my knee so that not only is there contrast but everything is loose so that it can be seen better. I'd like to think I'm pretty brave so I say sure. Go ahead and stick a giant needle in between my bones for twenty minutes while you funnel various liquids into a part of my body that, quite frankly, should not be holding that much fluid. So they did. And that wasn't actually the problem, the problem was when they told me they would be numbing my knee so I wouldn't feel it. Why is that a problem? Because they said they would be using a slightly stronger version of what the dentists use. Whatever that is called. I don't know, what I do know is that that stuff doesn't work on me. I've only ever had to remove one cavity, when I was twelve. Everything went perfectly fine, except the fact that
four shots of that numbing stuff
didn't work. My dentist jay told me to grit my teeth (not literally) and bear it. I always brush my teeth now.
And with this memory fresh in my mind, I scared myself into fainting. They didn't even do anything, I was just sitting in the consulting room and then I could hear anything, my neck got cold and
poof! The lights turned out. Freaky.
Well, yeah okay so I woke up a few seconds later with my mom and three doctor's. The doctor's where relaxed because I was fine and dandy but my mom was freaking out. So they stopped telling me about what they were going to do and just brought me into the room to get it done.
So they put the numbing shot in my and cleaned my knee off and stuck a damn needle in my knee. And it wasn't even that bad. Obviously I didn't dare look at it because I don't have the stomach for that stuff, but that was an interesting experience feeling your knee fill up with strange liquids and feeling your bones starting to separate a bit but also feeling nothing at all. From there it was rather easy going. I went to the MRI, which I've had done a million times before. So with seven layers of earplugs, I just fell asleep to the tune of that horrid machine and a really cold room. Scared the shyke out of my MRI doctor-person but I had a nice nap.
Now the scary part is the surgery that I need to get in a week and a half. I HAVE TO GET A DAMN SURGERY.
Sorry.
Now, I bet it's not even going to be that bad. I'm sort of a dramatic person so I'm probably making it out to be more than it is, but I don't want anyone putting strange objects and substances in my knee. And yet at the same time I do.
Naturally, this surgery is to help with overall growth, so instead of a month of recover, I've got a year. While the
actual surgery recover should only take about two months, I've got to wait until my meniscus is given a chance to heal as best it can before I begin using it again. This means ten days with no walking or weight on my leg whatsoever. Another six weeks with partial weight. Another two weeks of testing to see if it is okay for me to walk again. And then PT to work my leg muscles back up because with the deterioration in my muscles that I've already acquired (because its painful to even do a day's walk), and the deterioration I will be getting from immobility, its going to take a lot of specialized PT to get me back to my health.
But, despite how scary this all is, I will finally be able to walk farther than my 15 year old dog, who can barely make it to the end of the lawn and back. Not only can I start to walk normally and painlessly again. I can go back to playing sports and being fit and healthy. And for someone who has dealt with four years of unidentifiable pain, this is a really great thing.
But I'm still scared out of my petching mind.
BECAUSE, this surgery requires me to go under. It's not all that invasive, past patients have have enough reactions and problems that they've started knocking people out to work on them. My family doesn't have a history of problems with anesthetics but neither do they have a history of problems with simple caffeine or sleep aides, like I have. So that could potentially be a big danger. Even though my doctor knows I react highly to any sort of drug, he wants to try putting me under with extra caution anyway. Fun.
Okay, I wiped myself out, my pity-party/rant is done.