Skip to main content

Living bone-on-bone

Facebook is reminding me that, at this time last year, I was in ago-knee.
At that time, I'd dropped maybe 60 pounds. People -- friends, colleagues and women in the locker room at the pool -- were asking me if I "feel better." My short answer: Yes and no.
Certainly I enjoyed being able to swim 40 lengths in an hour-long session at the pool, or ride up to an hour on the recumbent stationary bike. And it was fun to retire my too-big swimsuits and search the Interwebs for bargain-priced styles a size or two smaller.
"But," I wrote in my Facebook status on this date in 2017, "my knee is still bone on bone."
And it hurt. Oh dearie-dear, did it hurt!
This was when two things became absolutely clear: Weight loss would not be a cure-all, and knee replacement surgery was inevitable.
Now, I don't expect friendly strangers not to comment on another person's weight loss, nor do I take offense when they ask, "Now, don't you feel better?" They mean well. And they've absorbed the culture's faulty presumptions that "fat" is the most unhealthy thing a person can be (and it's ugly, too), and that anything wrong with a fat person's health is repaired by their becoming a thin person -- well, thinner, anyway.
But I truly wish health care professionals would get a clue.
In this case, and at this time, mine did.
It would a couple weeks -- Sept. 1, to be exact -- when I would get in to see my orthopedist. He would try a three-week series of SynVisc shots, injecting a substance into my knee to provide artificial lubricant in the place where the bone meets the bone with no cartilage to cushion it.
Once I got past the side effects (I was one of the unlucky patients who experienced excruciating pain after the first injection), the SynVisc would keep me relatively pain-free for six months.
That's how long it would take to get into surgery. The orthopedist also referred me to a surgeon -- a different one than the fat-shaming, condescending jackass I'd seen six months before, for what turned out to be the consultation from hell.
I remember going into the consultation with the new surgeon in November with 12 pages of documentation of what I'd tried for relief of pain, my weight loss, my setbacks, my conversations with the Dans, etc. As it turned out, I didn't need any of it. He took one look at my X-ray and said, "You're bone on bone. You need this."
Today...well, it's a little humid and overcast, so I feel a twinge of pain in the operative knee.
But I'm anticipating a busy Saturday workday of running around Portage with a camera and notebook -- without crutches, and without ago-knee.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

It's way more complicated than that: Why I'm reviving this blog today

Hi again. It's been a while. Those who know me, including the approximately three of you that read "My Body, My Identity," know that I've got different concerns these days -- concerns that are related only tangentially to body weight, body identity, fitness and lifestyle. I have cancer -- diffuse large B-cell lymphoma, diagnosed March 8. My focus now is on killing those malignant cells before they eat me alive, and with a chemotherapy regimen, administered at the UW's Carbone Cancer Center, the chances of that happening are very, very good. With two of my six chemo treatments completed (I get treated every three weeks), I have good days and bad days -- mostly good, but I'm sitting out a bad day today. With cancer and chemo, my weight has become less of a priority. But concern has not entirely abated about maintaining the 135-pound weight loss I worked so hard to attain over the last two years. The diet that my oncologist recommended is pretty close to wh...
Post a Comment
Read more

Food porn

What you are about to see is pornography -- hard-core food pornography. Images like this one -- and even more obscene images, such as buttercream-y cakes and chocolate-y EVERYTHING -- pop up on my Facebook feed from time to time. Unless you are carbing up for three consecutive triathlons, this is not fuel. This is ballast. Biggie-bottom, fat-rolls-around-the-midsection ballast. I'd say, "Get it out of my sight!", except for one thing: I've been raised to crave food like this, and so has just about everybody I know. We grew up on monstrous-size portions of cheesy, saucy, meaty, greasy, creamy, sugary foods that neither fuel nor strengthen us, just fill us and fatten us. As fond as I am of approaching food the way the Apostle Paul approached ethical behavior for Christians -- "All things are lawful, but not all things are helpful" -- I have to be bluntly honest, and say that if you're serious about losing weight and keeping it off, you have to stay a...
Post a Comment
Read more

On loan

One year ago, I wrote this Facebook post.  Today, a twinge in my "operative" knee reminds me it's still true. How's my knee? It's actually behaving itself. I've had a long string of "good knee days" -- but folks, I don't take them for granted! Everything about our bodies -- our mobility, our senses, our strength, our minds, even our very lives -- are on loan to us. We are called to treat them with the best stewardship possible. But even if we do so, none of these things are ours to keep. Yeah, I get a little PO'd about that, but I work through it. God graciously listens to my rants.
Post a Comment
Read more