Minor Knee Surgery

This blog is starting to become a medical update more than a chronicle of what I’m trying to do with my life after graduate school. Hopefully, that won’t continue for too much longer.
So it’s surgery time. Minor, but i’ll still be under general anesthesia for the duration. The procedure is called arthroscopic lavage; basically, washing out the joint (in my case, the knee) via arthroscopy. The goal of this procedure is to wash out and remove any particles in the joint space which would/have caused inflammation and irritation. Also, to check out why I keep on getting Baker’s cysts and rupturing them (4 and counting!). No debridement, no surgical repair of the chondral defect, just cleaning out the space.

Am a bit nervous; haven’t ever had surgery before, haven’t even been under general anesthesia, and am not too happy it has come down to this. But I don’t want to wonder if each step I take up a set of stairs will come with shooting pains in my knee.

Straight out of the comics and into our world…

“Radiation hungry fungi could clean up waste”
“Chernobyl Fungus Feeds on Radiation”

Yes, astronauts would be able to grow fungi in outer space, but do you want to eat that?
On a more serious note, it’s amazing how things can evolve to their surroundings…. change or die.

The Edge is not a go…

The Edge Challenge adventure race that I had been training for in the past month is going to be done without me. My knee has been giving me problems for a while (see here) and it’s reached the point where continuing to train for this race would be extremely painful and potentially damaging. I’ve ruptured the Baker’s cyst three times, and after each time, it’s extremely painful and the cyst re-forms in a couple days.
So it’s off. I’m really, really not happy about this.

A sweater… believe it or not

It’s the Cozy V-neck pullover with deep ribbing from “Fitted Knits” by Stefanie Japel I’m actually using the yarn the pattern calls for, Cascade’s Pastanza, in the 073 colorway.
Here’s the project… almost done with the body:Partially completed Cozy V-neck

It’s an extremely quick pattern… I’m amazed at how much I’ve gotten done so far. Though I’ve got the sleeves left, which are always a bane to me. I think I’ll take the advice of one of the ladies on the Fitted Knits KAL and do them in the round to avoid the seaming.

Does this count as destashing?

Joint hijinks

I’ve been having problems with my left knee for sometime now – pain in the region of the kneecap going up and down stairs, running and other high impact activities.
After an x-ray and a MRI, it turns out that my left patella (aka, kneecap) is off center, and probably had been for years, causing more pressure on the outer side and pain. This is not too unusual; it’s a condition called patellar subluxation, and there are non-surgical options to correct it.
The catch is, the pain is from a full-thickness chondral defect on the lateral (outer side of the knee) surface of the underside of the patella. Not good. This means at that point, the cartilage has been damaged/destroyed to down to the bone. It’s still small, and if I can get the kneecap dealt with, that would reduce the stress on the defect and potentially prevent further damage.
Lots of what-ifs. On top of this, the combo of the subluxation and the chondral defect caused a Baker’s cyst to form, rupture, and then re-form and re-rupture in a rather painful cycle. This interlinked trio has been having a profound impact on my daily and extracurricular activities; I’ve been trying to work around them and sometimes through them, but I may have just hit a wall.

Road Biking…

This past Saturday was a road biking trip from Bethpage State Park to Jones beach and back. It’s a 30 mile roundtrip ride, and was listed in several forums as being good the beginner to intermediate rider. In the google maps image below, the trail is marked in black, with blue dot being Jones beach.

The red dot, as you may be wondering, is the place where half of us ended up stopping and turning around. 10 miles in, I and two others gave in and turned around. All of us were on mountain bikes, and were riding into the wind for the the trip out.

Tempting II, finished!

I’ve been working on the Tempting II pattern from knitty for quite a while now, and it’s finally done! Here’s the finished product, sans buckle: Tempting II, w/ Bella yarn from SWTC

The yarn I used was Bella, a 50/50 single ply soy-silk/wool blend from South West Trading Company that knit up in the same gauge as the pattern. Great colorway, looking like the ocean. I think I have enough left over for another sweater; I ended up buying about 2400 yard when I bought it…
Anyhow… the only problem I had with the pattern was the neckband. It wasn’t clear in the directions that you were joining every row of the neckband with the body; it reads as only the right side row is joined, which made it much too large as I found out.
I think I like it, though I am contemplating making the sleeves longer.

Getting Ink Done – Part II

Here’s the design, inked into my back as of yesterday night:
Star and Mobius

Chris did a great job with the shading and the line detail; totally happy with it and will be going back to him for other tattoo work. If you’re looking for an artist on Long Island, I’d totally recommend him and the shop, Da Vinci tattoo. The shop had a great atmosphere and the staff were very open and welcoming to customers. They weren’t patronizing or condescending when I went to talk to them about my design (multiple times and several incarnations of) or my concerns about getting a tattoo and how to take care of it. Yes, I did run into those attitudes when looking for a shop/artist to do the work.

The process itself was shorter than I expected. The actual time to ink the design into my back was about an hour, give or take. And I have to admit, it was a little more painful than I expected it to be; but hey, it does make sense; you’re causing tiny wounds to allow ink to be trapped under your skin in a particular design. (See the wikipedia definition of a tattoo)