So tomorrow is the big day – the dreaded knee surgery is upon me. Two months ago, while shepherding both of my kids and my sister’s oldest across an icy parking lot, I slipped and fell and landed squarely on both knees. Imagine a hockey goalie trying to make a save in the “5-hole.” That was pretty much me.
In the weeks immediately following the fall, I noticed an increasing sensitivity in my right knee. As it turns out, my father was not entirely correct when he said all injuries far from our heart can be cured by “rubbing some dirt on them” and “shaking them off.” So, I limped around for about a month while my wife reminded me frequently that I should get it checked out.
I had no desire to get it checked it out, for a couple of reasons. 1) The doctor I see is in cahoots with some unknown person from my past who has reason to want me dead. Why? I don’t know. But I know I have survived three or four earnest attempts by my present doctor to kill me so I really don’t have much faith in him. 2) It didn’t hurt that bad, it just always hurt. So I figured I would just “shake it off” and “rub some dirt on it.” And 3) the doctor’s office is where the scale lives – and the scale is to me what fire was to Frankenstein’s monster. “Aaaaaagghhhhh! Bad!” I am no fan of the scale.
So it was that at a family dinner in March, I was descending the staircase when my right knee decided it had had just about enough of my nonsense and decided to basically pull the old “exploding pain and popping sensations in the knee” trick. Down I went – unable to put any weight on it at all and then there was the pain. There was not enough dirt in all of Clinton County
The Emergency room diagnosed it, with a straight face mind you, as a “mild sprain.” I was hopeful and incredulous all at the same time. I have sprained my ankle before – and yes – it was very painful. No, the onset of that sprain did not have me re-enacting Raymond Burr’s silhouette from the opening credits of “Ironside” as I did with this injury. So, my incredulity was based on the fact that I was surrounded by doctors and nurses and orderlies and they said “mild sprain.” Turns out, there was nothing neither mild nor “sprainy” about it.
Torn meniscus was the diagnosis. Painful but common injury to the knee. Could have been much worse – fix it with arthroscopic outpatient surgery, take it easy and should be right as rain (with the attendant certainty that I will develop arthritis in that knee some time in the future).
So in all the poking, prodding, examining, imaging and testing that goes into moving this injury from a mild sprain to a torn meniscus and the eventual surgical repair, they tell me to go and have a pre-op EKG so they can make sure the ticker is still registering all moments great and small in its proper fashion.
I won’t bore you with the details – but I did have the EKG and there was an irregularity that was later chalked up to the human sweater vest I wear under my tee-shirt. The lovely woolen number from the Robin Williams collection seems to have interfered with one of the EKG leads and, after figuring that out, everything else tested out just fine.
While at the heart doctor’s office, they gave me a stress test. This was funny to me because I take one of these every day at my home when I open the evening mail. Apparently the doctor wanted something more scientific and observable than me opening the statement from the student loan people, so he ordered a test.
Because of the knee injury, I couldn’t do the six million dollar man treadmill test, so they gave me a chemical test. Basically you lie there on your side and they inject you with a drug that makes you feel like you are having a heart attack. I’m sure that’s not its purpose, but the feeling that there was an army of hobbits trying to kick their way out of my chest cavity did nothing to help calm my nerves laying there on the doctor’s table.
The sensation was terrifying. My dad died from complications of a heart attack. As I lay there, heart pounding wildly out of control, I thought of him and was profoundly impacted. The chemical stress test is deceiving in that your heart is racing but you aren’t breathing hard or working out or having any accompanying physical exertion. You just lay there, heart racing like the engine of a parked car with a brick on the accelerator.
In that moment I thought “this is what it must feel like to die of a heart attack.” Now I will be the first to admit that I have a real gift for the dramatic. And I am sure I was never in any danger at all – and if your doctor tells you to go and have a stress test; go and have the stress test. Knowing what is going on in there is better than not knowing.
But laying there as I was, heart racing, the reptilian genes whose genetic legacy is the maintenance of bare instinct and raw survival emotions slowly came to life and went to work slowing my heart even when the techs were telling me to get my heart beating faster.
Images from my extremely ordinary life began to flood my mind. All of sudden there was the summer day my best friend and I spent with a couple of girls we had crushes on, circling the lake in a speedboat, vivid memories of talking with my daughter about very ordinary things and realizing she is anything but ordinary. Next I saw my wife – this person with whom I have shared the last 25 years – at the hospital on the day both kids were born and equally vivid were the images of Michael; his impossible good humor and infectious laughter. Finally, my heart slowing back to its normal 75 beats per minute, there were hazy moments from when I played little league baseball. All of my family was there – dad in that orange, Banlon short-sleeved shirt, mom in her lawn chair, and both brothers leaning up against a fence hollering at me. There too was my sister, 9 years younger than me, running around in a sun dress.
I guess the point of all of it is this – as I lay there, heart pounding, feeling like the only thing I could control was what thoughts went through my mind – the images that came to me weren’t of work, or money, or possessions. I did not recall a single time I won an argument, told someone off, or vanquished some rival. What came to me were friendly faces, warm memories, time with my family. That’s what matters. What came to me was a reminder that it’s the good stuff – a smile, a joke, 10 hugs and kisses to the 4 year old before you can get out the door for work in the morning – that’s what matters.
So listen, thanks for stopping by my blog today. It’s been a while since I posted and I appreciate your continued support. Wherever you are or whoever you are with today; I hope you find yourself in the company of people the memories of whom will act to comfort and secure you some time in the future. That is what really matters.
Dennis
smalltowndad@hotmail.com
