Trego's Mountain Ear

When I looked over the 1900 and 1910 Censuses, I was surprised at the detail involved – information that we have long quit recording.  You can find a name, age, and the simple comment “insane” – which tells something.   More impressive and common was the comment “cripple”. 

Fortunately, I wasn’t at the start of my career – I had already had arthroscopic surgery on both knees.  A century earlier, that surgery wasn’t available – in  the censuses of 2000 and 2010, medical advances had reduced the need to mark the individual as “cripple.” 

I’ve had one knee scoped three times and the other twice.  The statistics show me that it correlates with size, and at 6’3” I suspect I’m in the top ten percent.  Longer-lasting knees is a benefit to being on the short side. 

Anyway, I wasn’t surprised Tuesday night when my left knee blew out again.  I’m a high mileage unit, and need more maintenance.  I hobbled to the drawer that holds old knee braces, put one on, hobbled through Wednesday, and on Thursday decided it was time to go to the walk-in orthopedic clinic in Kalispell. 

I can’t say I walked in – hobbled in, limped in would be better descriptors.  I had checked in, and barely managed to sit down before the guy showed up to take me to the X-ray machine.  The X-rays showed that it wasn’t a cartilage tear – there is no cartilage left.  I was shifted to a nurse practitioner who looked at the knee and the X-rays and came back with a long needle filled with painkillers and steroids.  After the injection, a nice lady came by to fit me with a new brace that would fit better and keep the kneecap in place.  Then (after Renata helped me put my shoe on) I walked out.  I walked slowly, but I walked out. 

The knee is still swollen, the steroids are causing sleeplessness as did the pain, but an injury that would have been crippling a century earlier had been reduced to a long day of disability. 

I can handle that.  Once more, with gratitude for the miracles of modern medicine.