Swell

Not much from me here today.

I’m definitely hoping to get back to work in the lab tomorrow, but my knee is still a bit of a mess. The bandages came off today (as instructed by the surgeon), but what’s underneath isn’t very pretty. My whole leg is quite swollen and rather sore, so I’ve been really taking it easy. I’ve been dozing, watching the Winter Olympics, and trying to find the image that Thomas Heaton took at 4:52 in this video so that I can share it here.

I failed on that one, but at least the Olympics and the dozing went well.

Once again, I’m left wondering how much of taking such amazing photos is down to skill (lots), how much is down to patience and hard work (lots), and how much is down to having the time and money to do it and the best equipment at hand (probably lots as well).

And so once again, I feel equally motivated and overwhelmed.

Anyway, back to reality and it seems likely that with a very busy week ahead, I’m not going to have the luxury of being able to drive a car, so Uber must step up.

Op

Golly. If you’re reading this, I’m possibly/probably asleep in an operating theatre somewhere in the southern suburbs of Cape Town.

I went to see my knee doc again on Wednesday and he said he’d like to have a look at my knee.

INTERNALLY.

Apparently, the usual routine for this sort of thing is for me to stop eating for 12 hours, go to the hospital, go to sleep and him to look at my knee.

INTERNALLY.

So that’s what’s happening.

I should be back to (or even better than) normal in no time at all.

See you on the other side.

Knee

Phases 2 and 3 of The Great Knee Repair took place today. I told you I was going to get this sorted.
Phase 1 happened on Monday when an X-ray was taken of my knee.
Phase 2 was a short, expensive, but mainly positive appointment with the surgeon, and Phase 3 was a short, expensive, but mainly positive MRI back at the Radiology Department.

Here’s one of the many hundreds of images that were taken. I know basically what I’m looking at here, but I’m not completely au fait with exactly what a good knee should look like.
If you’re in the know about these things (and I know of at least three doctors that regularly read this blog), and it shows something massively serious, rather leave it for the knee doc to tell me when I chat to him later this week.

Of course, I need something to be wrong. There’s no point in going through all these short, expensive appointments only to find that… well… there isn’t anything to find. I need something to be wrong so that they (the knee team) can put it right. Truth be told, I know that they’ll find something, because I have absolutely typical symptoms for cartilage damage. I’d just like it to be cartilage damage for the right reasons and still in some sort of repairable state.

MRI images are quite cool to look at, but if there was to be some sort of Trophy for Cool Scientific/Medical Images, they would fall some way behind electrophoresis gels:

for overall trendiness, I feel.

Such pretty, orderly lines. Glad I’m not patient number 6 though, hey?