quickupdate

After studying for five hours, I should probably just go to bed, but I figured I'd post a quick update first.

I now have a knee doc out here. My therapist works with him a lot, so she recommended him. He happens to be one of the team docs for the Seahawks, so he must be pretty good. I saw him for the first time this morning. After talking about my pain management issues, he poked and prodded my knee and ankle. Pretty routine stuff, but he instantly found the spot where my knee hurts the most, which wasn't fun. After pushing on sore spots, he looked over my old x-rays and ordered new ones of my knee & ankle. He reviewed the new x-rays with me, and said he doesn't see an obvious reason why my ankle hurts. He said it's generally hard to see ankle stuff on x-rays though. He thinks there could be junk floating around in there, or else it just hurts because of soft tissue damage - which is probably typical from the type of injury I had.

My knee x-ray apparently looks a little different than the last ones I had done (this past spring, I think). The doc said the hole that was drilled for the ACL screw may have gotten a little bigger, which I guess happens sometimes, and it would explain some of the pain I'm feeling. Beyond that, he said it was obvious that I'd had a lot of cartilage removed (to fix the tear). Also, apparently the joint space is just slightly smaller in that knee, meaning my tibia & femur are a little closer together than on my good knee. All those factors could be contributing to the pain I'm having. My doc wanted to double-check on that ACL screw hole and wanted to make sure I didn't have another meniscus tear, so he told me to have an MRI done. After talking to one of the ankle docs that works at his clinic, they decided I should have an MRI on my ankle, too. Luckily they got me in right away, so right after my doctor's appointment, I went to their other office to have two MRI's done. Fun times. I'll get results within the next couple of days, so I'll update then.

On the bright side, my doc seemed to have some ideas for pain management (depending on the MRI results), and thinks that his ankle doc friend will be able to help me in that regard too. It's nice to hear something other than "yeah, you were in a bad accident, you're bound to still be in pain." In the meantime, I got more painkillers. I asked my doc if there were any drug options that didn't involve narcotics, but as it turns out, everything else makes me sick. Oh well.

Okay, I really need to sleep.