Month: January 2019

My knee popped out again this morning. My eyes were open when it happened just like yesterday. Yesterday, I started thinking about the x-rays I had done of my right knee a few weekends ago. The x-ray I thought of was my second x-ray in the second emergency room that I was in on Saturday after my second ambulance ride. It was the first ambulance ride that I didn’t have any pants on for!

I make it a point to remember everyone’s name if I’m going to speak of them in my blog so I think my Porter was named Sergei who took me for my second x-ray at Henry Ford Hospital downtown this time. I thought about this x-ray because for the past 19 years, I haven’t really ever spoken about this, at least with an x-ray technician! Sergei (I think that’s what his name was) took me into the room and a young woman got me ready for the x-rays.

She asked me if I had any metal in my knee. I gave her this standard answer just like I give a list of surgeries that I’ve had and when I’ve had them. I don’t think I got her name but I told her that I had metal buttons in my right knee and I told her that it was orthopedic hardware so it was OK to x-ray.

Once she took the pictures, the same pictures I took at the Dearborn emergency room she came out from behind the glass and asked me when I got what I got in my knee. I kind of laughed and told her that they are metal buttons that I got from my ACL reconstruction. She told me that she had never seen them before in her life! She added that they DO look like buttons!

I have never really been asked about them before and I had my ACL reconstructed 19 years ago! I was asked about the hardware when my knee was first injured in September 2016. I told the doctor then that it was almost 17 years ago that my ACL was repaired. It really is mind-boggling that I am STILL having problems with my knee!

After the x-rays were finished and I was taken back to my waiting cubicle, the doctor came back in to talk to me about the x-rays and what her plans were for me. I can’t remember her name either but I know that she was really, super pregnant! My Mom asked when she was due and she answered that she was due in February. My Mom let her know that she had three of her kids in February. That’s 60%!

She told me that she was sending me home and my Mom let her know that I needed to go back home in an ambulance. That was my third ambulance ride of the day and the second one that I STILL didn’t have any pants on! I still don’t have any answers about what is happening to my knee and why it is happening! All I know is that it hurts! As I thought about my x-rays from that time in the emergency room, it made me wonder what these buttons look like in my knee.

My knee popped out this morning. Only, it was different than it always has been. Normally, my eyes are still closed and I’m just starting to become coherent when my knee will pop that causes my eyes to fly open at the exact moment that I am ripped from my slumber. That’s when I call myMom for help!

It is only after my Championship Saturday that I spent in two emergency rooms and after two x-rays and three ambulance rides that I know it is not my knee popping out. My knee joint is still intact when it feels like this. The x-rays showed that! What Dr. Washington told me was that it was a tendon or ligament that is stretching funny that causes my knee to hurt.

It no longer, “pups”out but rather just kind of, “slides” out of place but either way both hurt! A lot! For the rest of the day that my knee, “pops” out, it hurts! Just like right now! I’m trying to wrap my head around it STILL hurting after MORE than a year and a half removed from surgery!

I wonder if continued damage is being done to my knee?! Dr. Moore has been through all of my MRIs multiple times. Now, I am just waiting to get an appointment with Dr. Bitar. He isthe PMR (physical medicine and rehabilitation) doctor that Dr. Moore has referred me to. To me, it is further proof that my knee is broken! I need ongoing care!

My knee, “pops” out multiple times during each week but what makes this time different is that I was awake, my eyes were open, and I thought I had bypassed the pain! Not so much!

This morning, I yawned and covered my mouth. It was one of those long, drawn out yawns and once I was finished, I started laughing! I laughed because I thought of a memory from my first years teaching. The memory is from back when I taught English. My Mom looked at me this morning quizzically and asked me why I was laughing.

I laid the entire story out not really thinking she would laugh but my heart was warmed at the memory! I was teaching a novel, I’m not sure which one it was, (The Outsiders, Don’t You Dare Read This, Mrs. Dunphrey, or Surviving the Applewhites) but I stood on the right side of the overhead projector in front of the class. (This had to be in 2008, hence, the overhead projector). Because I was teaching a novel, I had printed out the vocabulary words and definitions onto the overheads so I had a stack of overheads that had the various definitions on them in my hand.

I felt a yawn coming on so I turned my head to the left and covered my mouth with the papers that were in my right hand. The papers that were in my hand were clear overhead sheets! It was again, one of those long, drawn out yawns. My students saw the ENTIRE thing because they were clear papers that I was holding. My students did not start laughing until one of them let me know that they could see my mouth as a yawned.

We all started to laugh as I apologized for them having to see that! My heart was warmed thinking of that entire class of seventh graders laughing. I hadn’t thought of that memory in a very long time but my long, drawn out yawn this morning made me think of it. My heart has been warmed by this memory all day!

Tuesday, my Mom was humming a song that is on my “Daddy” playlist. I haven’t listened to it in a while so I asked my Mom if she wanted to listen to that playlist and she helped me get ready for the day. She did so that is what we listen meg to.

OF COURSE it made me cry! The playlist started playing for a second time when I was completely ready for the day and was seated in my living room picking a shipping label off of a package I received. I was picking the label off to get rid of my information so as to write my niece’s information on it to send her a care package while she is away at college.

So here I sat having a difficult time picking at that label and I felt a bit melancholy because these songs on the playlist, my Dad‘s playlist, the songs that were on the CD I made for him for his 55th birthday which was titled, “The Daddy Mix.” I gave that CD to him four months before he died. My Mom has told me that he’d listen to it often before he died.

I was engrossed in concentrating on picking that label off and listening to the music. I’m not even sure which song it was but I heard my Dad‘s voice singing along with it! I picked my head up and glanced to where I thought the sound was coming from. Obviously he was not there but I gasped and told my Mom that, “I heard Daddy’s voice!”

I’ve only heard his voice twice before in dreams I have had in the 12 years since his death. It was shocking to hear his voice crystal clearly singing along with the song while I was awake. My brothers and my son have similar voices to him when they say things that he would always say but they aren’t the voice I heard singing as I was concentrating at picking that label off. Hearing my dad’s voice has made me miss him so much more but I am grateful to have heard it!

So, yesterday, Sean watched both of the championship games with me. BOTH of my teams lost! I did however, see this commercial twice.

I cried both times I saw it. I tried to just wipe my eyes with the sleeve of my sweatshirt before Sean saw me tearing up, but he did anyway! He knows that I can’t control my emotions very well anymore and I cry at a lot of commercials but he let me know that I was 2 for 2 with this one!

It’s definitely a tearjerker especially given the extensive football conversation I had with one of my EMTs, Mike. we both agreed, “Saints all the way!” Even though he is a Spartan! He told me that he won his fantasy football league and I warned him that I only pick the losers!

Well, unfortunately, that still rings true! 😒😒😒

I did my pre-student teaching at an alternative education high school in Lincoln Park. I was given this assignment just after I got my Canadian crutches. I showed up at that school using my Canadian crutches that were very new to me! I sat in a chair next to the teacher’s desk and was nervous and did not know what to expect.

On that first day, I arrived early and situated myself inside the classroom before the students came into the room. A boy who was sitting in the back of the room spoke. I was writing in my notebook and he said, “Are you a cripple? Aren’t you a cripple?” When I looked it up, he was looking directly at me!

I didn’t know how to respond to that if he was talking to me. But, he WAS talking to me! I WAS the, “cripple” then he spoke of. I was so new to the disabled community that I did not even realize that he was talking to me! The teacher corrected him and said something to him and I can’t even remember because this had to be 13 years ago.

So, the night before my 3 ambulance ride day, I saw this movie. I saw it with my two, “sacreds” (Sean and my Mom). I ABSOLUTELY loved it! I am no movie critic but I would definitely recommend this movie to anyone!

I wanted to write this post regarding this movie that night but I was too tired so I figured that I would wait until Saturday morning. My Saturday was a huge fiasco and I had not gotten a chance to write it. But when I saw this video on YouTube, I took pause. I love this movie but I definitely can’t NOT think about Trevor‘s comments! They were eye-opening for sure! Maybe it should be more so because I am more clearly part of that community now!

I still loved that movie and I will see it again but I really can’t NOT think about these comments anymore!

It’s pretty frustrating to me how for the past more than two years I am conscious of my right knee. The third definition that popped up in my Google search was, “Painfully aware of; sensitive to.” If that hasn’t been me for more than the past two years, I don’t know what it is!

I opened my eyes this morning and rolled over from my left side onto my back. I felt movement in my knee! Any feeling that I have in my right knee scares me but feeling strange movement just after being in the hospital for pain involving my right knee is EXTRA scary!

I suggested amputation of my right leg to Dr. Washington in the ER on Saturday. My Mom ABSOLUTELY hates when I say that! Suggesting that does not actually mean that I want to cut my leg off but rather, I want this pain to go away and it has NOT for the past two years so amputations seems like my best option.

Dr. Washington understood that I was joking and laughed but he let me know that it is better to have, “Two pivot points” when transferring to or from my will chair so I need both of my feet. I guess amputation is not an option but I DESPERATELY want this pain to go away!

It’s so frustrating that it has not gone away in the past two years and somehow I’m trying to come to terms with the fact that it may not ever go away and my knee is broken.