weekend in review

My parents were in town this past weekend, so we did all sorts of fun Seattle-type things.

Thursday night I picked them up at the airport and we had dinner. That was pretty much all we did, since it was kind of late.

On Friday I met with my ankle specialist (more on that later). After that, I went to class, and they took my car and drove around. Then we went to the Elysian brewpub for dinner.

We went to an Italian grocery store & bakery on Saturday and bought stuff to make sandwiches. We went back to my apartment to hang out and eat our sammiches. Then we went downtown to the Pike Place Market. After that we met up with some of my friends in the U-District for pizza. My parents took off after a while, and the rest of us went to a hip-hop show and did some barhopping.

On Sunday we went to Snoqualmie, which is probably like 30 miles from here. It was a really pretty drive due to the fall colors. We went to Snoqualmie Falls, which was flowing a lot stronger than the last time I'd gone. After that we spent some time bumming around town, and found a good Mexican restaurant. We also went to a railroad museum, which was pretty neat. Here are some pics (thanks to the point & shoot camera I got for my birthday):









After we got back from Snoqualmie, we went back downtown to the market to buy stuff for dinner. My mom had bought me a Pike's Place seafood cookbook, and we brought it with us so we could decide what recipe to make. While we were standing in front of one of the seafood places, I was paging through the book, and one of the workers came over and started talking to me. After I'd picked out a recipe (halibut with a honey sauce), the worker started paging through the cookbook and showed me where there were pictures of himself and his coworkers. So that was kind of cool. My parents and I came back to my apartment to cook the halibut (along with green beans and an acorn squash) and it was awesome. Oh, and my parents bought me flowers from the market. Here's a picture, but it doesn't really do them justice:



My parents left this morning, and now I'm back to classes and stuff. Oh well. It's really nice to be in an area where I can feel like I'm on vacation without going anywhere.


As I mentioned earlier, my dad and I went to see my ankle doc on Friday. He showed us the x-rays and MRI and talked through everything in detail. Apparently there are a few different problems going on in my ankle. I have some cartilage between my ankle & shin bone that's kind of roughed up, I have a slight divot or something on the bottom of my shin bone, there's some arthritis between the bottom of my ankle joint & my heel, and there's a pocket of fluid in one of my ankle bones.

The fluid inside the bone could be either a cyst or a pocket of blood. If it's blood, that basically means that bone never healed from the original injury, and is still bleeding. If I understood the doc correctly, it might not be healing because something keeps injuring it - probably some of that rough cartilage. It's kind of weird now because the top of that bone isn't solid, so instead of pressure being spread across that bone when I step on it, it just goes to the solid parts, creating more stress.

My doc ordered a couple of tests so he can get better views of that fluid and the cartilage/shinbone. Later this week I'm going to have a bone scan and a CT scan, and after that, the doc will have a better idea of what's going on.

It sounds like there's a strong possibility that I'll need another surgery soon. Luckily I think we can put it off for a little while, and there are some other things my doc is going to try first. He wants to inject some anesthesia into the joint with arthritis and the one with the rough cartilage. If my ankle is still bothering me, then it'll be obvious that the pocket of fluid in the bone is one of the major contributors to my ankle pain (since everything else will be numb). If the doc does surgery, he'll go in and smooth out the cartilage, and then drain that fluid and probably pack a bone graft in that pocket so the bone is strong again.

In addition to this procedure, my doc thinks I'll need another ankle surgery when I'm a little older. Eventually I'll need an ankle fusion (which sounds like no fun) or, if the technology is good enough by that point, an ankle replacement.

It's pretty depressing to find out about all these problems with my ankle. Until the latest MRI, doctors had been telling me that my ankle would keep getting better. They told me it most likely wouldn't be at 100% again, but there was the potential of it still healing up pretty well. Now I know that there are all sorts of problems with my ankle. I kind of had the feeling something was wrong with it (which was why I kept bugging people to check it out), but I had no idea how bad it was. If I have the surgery, it'll probably fix some things for now, but there's really nothing the doc can do about the arthritis. He said he can treat it symptomatically, meaning he can probably inject it with cortisone every now and then, but I don't think that's not going to stop it from getting worse. I knew arthritis was inevitable, but I didn't know it would set in so soon.

Anyway, I'll stop before this turns into a downer post. This is a long one, did anyone even make it this far? ;)