The first thing I want to do is say a huge THANK YOU to all my wonderful friends who called me before and after my surgery! You have no idea how much that meant to me!  Also, to all of you who emailed me before surgery to wish me well and after to check up on me, thank you for talking the time to drop me a note! I am so appreciative of my great friends and feel very blessed indeed J. You guys all ROCK! I had over a hundred emails!

That said, here goes.

Here are the $64,000 questions:

Why can’t electronic equipment just work? Why do they give you a lot less Contact PM than Daytime in a box? Why can’t you just plug in a computer and have it work correctly the first time out of a box? Why doesn’t anything I ever do go smoothly?

So after my knee surgery last year to repair my broken knee cap with screws and wires, the pain took much too long to go away than it should have. I went to an orthopedic surgeon in Washington last summer to see why it still hurt and why it was still so swollen. They did a bone scan, a CT scan and x-rays. They told me I had a bone infection. Long story short, I did not have an infection. I had asked them to do an MRI to check the soft tissue but they were convinced it was an infection so they wouldn’t. They said wait 6 months and come back.

Meanwhile, my knee became more and more painful. Running (well walking really) agility courses because more and more difficult for me and more painful every weekend. If I couldn’t do what I loved more than anything else in the World, I might as well not be on earth. Sounds melodramatic but that is how I feel. In case you hadn’t noticed, I have an addictive personality and when I put myself into something, I never do it half ass. It is all or nothing for me.

So I struggled every weekend and had to train smarter and harder to get Charisse to run while I hobbled around the ring yelling, “left, right, go come, tunnel get in go!”  It SUCKED! As if I wasn’t slow enough before I broke my knee!!! Now I was pathetic. Charisse, however, was/is amazing! I am SO lucky to have such a wonderful dog to run. I never thought I would have another as great at distance as Isabella but I got a great one in Charisse!

When we got back down to SO Cal, I went to see the original surgeon who put my knee back together last year. I convinced him to do an MRI! FINALLY, they would listen to me! I told them last year that I thought there was more wrong than just the break but they wouldn’t listen. I had sprained my knee the year before but recovered in a month to be good as new so I knew this was something that had happened when I broke my knee in the fall.

Surprise! Surprise! MRI showed a large meniscus tear!

So, even though my deductable ran out for the year a few weeks after the MRI, he said he did not want to remove the hardware and repair the meniscus until it had been a year after the original surgery! YIKES! We have a HUGE deductable L.

I continued struggling along with my messed up knee in agility and crossed off the days until surgery.

I called to schedule the surgery three times and nobody ever returned my calls!!! Then, I finally got it scheduled and was told they would call me to make an appointment for me to talk with my surgeon before the day of repair and removal. Well, a week out form surgery, still no call. I called in three more times and finally talked to a different person and got them to schedule my appointment to see the doc.

He told me what they would be doing and I told him under no circumstances was he to remove the meniscus completely! Someday I want to have stem cell therapy on that knee and need a meniscus for it to repair itself. He agreed to not remove it.

I got a letter from the surgery Center where he would be doing the outpatient procedure telling me when and where to be. Then a few days before, I get another call telling me that my insurance won’t pay for that Surgery Center so they move me to a place across from the parking lot of his office.

A day before surgery, the OLD place that was to do it calls me for a pre-op telephone interview! I told them it was no longer at their facility but she insists it is. Long story short, they were the one who cancelled it in the first place! Talk about no communication!

So finally, I get a message that my surgery will be At 1 PM and I have to be there at 11:30. GREAT! I can putter in the morning and take my time! What I didn’t realize is that I would be the last patient of the day. NEVER EVER be the last patient of the day on FRIDAY at a surgery center!!! More on that later.

So Mel says, “I will take you over there and drop you off, then go home.” I was like “WHAT????” Drop me off at the door? Oh I could feel the love! Evidently, that was enough shame so he revised his proposal to, “I was kidding! I will come in of course!”

Sure, whatever.

So in we go at 11;30. Mel sits with me for a half hour, gets antsy and says he is going to leave. I told Mel to take both phones with him so I was held captive in the waiting room with no form of communication! OH THE HUMANITY!!!! I asked the nice nurse who checked me in if she thought the surgeon would mind holding on to my phone in the surgery room so he could answer when all my friends called to find out how I was doing. She laughed so at least she got the joke.

Then the nurse comes out and tells me the doctor is running an hour late! PERFECT! Now I am stuck in that stupid waiting room for two more hours with nothing to do! Not a good thing for an addictive person with OCD (the mental kind). I counted all the hooks in the ceiling and then went crazy trying to find out why they were there. I counted the blocks on the columns and the tiles in the entryway. I got so bored I was reduced to People Magazine! Like I give a crap what those ego inflated, overrated, celebrities are up to.

FINALLY, they come get me about 1:30. They take me into a room and give a dressing gown about three sizes too small for my BIG ASS PROBLEM! So I am walking around trying to hold it together in the back so nobody goes blind looking at that junk back there! They take my blood pressure (which by now has gone sky high but is usually 96/60). My heart is racing because I have had hours and hours to stew about the upcoming surgery.

Then the anesthesiologist comes in. I tell him I am allergic to everything and that anesthesia makes me puke. He assures me he will give me something to keep me from getting sick. I tell him that the guy from my surgery last year did a great job and I never got sick. He talks the talk and I believe him.

Then they walk me down the hall to the surgery room. No wheel chair, no gurney, I just walk. My BIG ASS PROBLEM hanging out from the gown for all to see cause I can only cover so much with one hand holding that midget sized gown closed (OK, it was a normal sized robe, I am just jumbo sized). I lie on the table and they hook me up to a bunch of stuff. The anesthesiologist comes in and I tell him, “Don’t croak me!” He reassures me and that is the last thing I remember until woke up around 4:30. Evidently, the 45 minute procedure took 2 hours!

The surgeon came in and showed me a bunch of photos of the inside of my knee (see photo above) and is all excited because he found some “loose body” in my knee! GREAT! Now I need CSI to find out why there is a loose body in my knee!

WHAT???

My brain, still fried from the drugs had a hard time sorting it out. So back to the photos. There it was! A loose body in my knee! NO WONDER I HAVE BEEN IN SO MUCH DAMN PAIN!!! So, the question is, why didn’t this little bugger show up on all the x-rays, CT scans, bone scans and MRIs I had? What the hell?

My only speculation is that when I broke my knee there was a bone chip missing and that it migrated down between the long bones in my leg (the knee joint) and built up calcium around it. I go back in 10 days so will know more then I guess.

That surgeon was beaming at his “find!” He was so happy and proud it was hysterical (even in my state of stupor).

So now it is 5 PM and the doctor is gone (I figured he was talking to Mel) and the nurse says I can’t go home until I drink and eat something and can keep it down. She offers me, get this, Sprite or Ginger Ale!!! I say, I don’t drink that crap when I am well! So she says, “How about Jell-O or you probably won’t eat that either,” she says with a great amount of disgust in her voice. Now I am getting the feeling that this is not a very nice person. It is Friday, I am the last patient and this bitch wants to go home and I am not eating or drinking that crap she is offering me so she is getting surlier by the moment.

So she says again, “Well you can’t go home until you eat or drink something!!!!” And she is hot (and I don’t mean hot as in a hot babe either). Then she remembers she has some applesauce and apple juice. I tell her that would be fine. I didn’t even ask her if it was organic or not LOLOLOL! I try to lean up to get it from her and get sick to my stomach. She SNATCHES it away from me and says, “WELL! That’s it then! You can’t go home until you eat and if you are sick you can’t eat or drink so you are stuck here!” LIKE IT IS MY FAULT!!! She was such a bitch!

I asked her where my husband was and she went to find him. Poor Mel had been stuck in the waiting room for three hours! He thought I would be done by 2 and didn’t know I was brought in late and now it was 5 and he was still patiently waiting (or impatiently I would imagine).

I had watched while I sat in the waiting room before surgery as that surgeon came out and talked to person after person who had a loved one in surgery. Did he go talk to Mel? OF COURSE NOT! He wanted out of there! It was Friday and he was running late and couldn’t be  bothered. He did the same damn thing to Mel last year when I had surgery to repair my knee. Mel sat in the room for 3 hours waiting but the surgeon left to go to a convention!

I am going to give him holy hell too! He is not used to people standing up to him and I am always doing that so he won’t be surprised but I am really pissed!

Poor Mel, he was trying so hard to take care of me. He hands me garbage bag in the car just in case I get sick (which I do). Without getting too graphic, I can tell you when I got out of the car, I could take no more than 1 step without using the garbage bag so it took quite a long time to get from the car into the Global Warmer.

So this is the first time I have felt well enough to get up and write so I am making up for going two days without writing anything and that is why this turned into a War and Peace sized novel.

All I can say is I better be FTH when this sucker heals!