You know, this is so like me. At a time of life when, as a fairly new member of the "Grandma Club," I expected to be a thoroughly modern grandmother doing trendy grammy-like things such as traveling the globe, learning to speak Mandarin Chinese, joining hoity-toity book clubs and getting various parts of my anatomy, umm ... put back into place, you might expect I'd do something typically me - like and blow out my knee instead.
Yes, while a variety of my friends are searching for the perfect plastic surgeon to obliterate those bothersome crows feet that at our age alarmingly advance to the north and the south, I'm spending way too much time with orthopedic surgeons, MRIs and learning way more than I want to know about some unfortunate tears in my left knee's medial and lateral meniscus areas.
I mean, I didn't even know the human body contained a "meniscus" and, indeed, injuries to this area used to be referred to in a blanket manner as "torn cartilage." Now "cartilage" I get; along with bones, muscles and ligaments they sort of keep your body packed together in one convenient package versus rendering us into large, floppy blobs on the ground. And unlike my friends who are experiencing the delights of youthful nips and tucks, fixing a torn meniscus wasn't going to leave me even one teensy bit cuter.
But because I have an aversion to walking like Chester on "Gunsmoke" for the rest of my days, I decided to have the darned thing fixed. And by the way - speaking of limping TV characters, what is the deal with Dr. House on the Fox show of the same name? This guy has a nasty limp and a disposition to match. I mean, aren't those characters supposed to be brilliantly gifted doctors for the love of God? So why doesn't somebody fix Dr. House's knee? Are we to believe he'd rather gulp handfuls of pills than go under the knife and stay off his feet for a few days?
My bum knee didn't have daredevil-like origins, I'm afraid. During my ballet days in high school I tried to add a fourth rotation to my pirouette en dehors, which is the fancy ballet name for a backward spin. I spun but my knee stayed put - never a good combination. I re-injured it in an embarrassing softball mishap (swinging my bat mightily at the ball, landing in a heap at home base and leaving on a stretcher). Although I am tempted to report that this latest injury was due to a skydiving mishap, it was actually a much lamer reason - going awkwardly into a standing position from the couch. I mean, Agent 007 couldn't have executed a riskier move.
Four months later the darned thing was still a mess and I was gaining an alarming resemblance to Grandpa on "The Real McCoy's," although if your eyesight is good enough to read this column you are probably too young to remember that old sitcom. No, navigating along with a limp that produced those attractive goose-wing-flapping elbows just wasn't a good look for me.
Now I've never been mistaken for a medical doctor, but my theory is that the meniscus sort of keeps your various knee parts smooshed together as you're executing highly dangerous tactical maneuvers such as strolling to the kitchen for a glass of water. So it was quite unnerving when this manner of activity occasionally concluded in an unexpected deep lunge position. Of course I would swear to anybody fortunate enough to witness this vision of graceful loveliness that I was simply getting into shape. You know, a few deep lunges around the kitchen are great for those lagging thigh muscles.
My friend Rosemary also suffered a torn meniscus recently and her falls were so spectacular she actually managed to topple over and then roll down almost the complete set of granite steps at the state capital building. "I'm really good at falling down," Rosemary reported to her doctor prior to her own surgery. "Falling down isn't something you want to be good at, Rosemary," her doctor admonished.
Not relishing the thought of a future filled with periodic face plants, off I went to get my knee fixed. The anesthesiologist administering the big narcotics came in for a chat before hand, explaining he would give me "something" before he put me to sleep. Unfortunately his words barely penetrated due to my alarm over the fact that the admitting nurse was writing in tattoo-strength ink a giant "YES" above my left knee, indicating that the doctor was addressing the correct limb come surgery time.
This begged the question, of course, the status of the other knee. Shouldn't somebody be writing "NO" on my other knee? Before I could ponder this quandary too deeply, I was in a chilly operating room and scooching myself onto the operating table. Out of the corner of my eye I detected the anesthesiologist tapping a needle, then all was darkness until I heard someone calling my name.
"Is it over yet?" I asked groggily, wondering if I was in heaven and if not was the anti-nausea stuff going to work? Apparently it was the latter because I was munching crackers and sipping juice before downing a couple of big white pills. Then it was proceed back home to recover where I am still trying to perfect the art of sitting with my leg above my heart without implementing a major jackknife position that requires the assistance of the fire department to untangle.
So this grammy will have to wait awhile for the "fun" surgical procedures that are sure to knock off the years and make people incredulous that someone as young as me could be a grandma. But one thing is for sure: this stupid walker I'm lurching around on has rocketed me into the spitting image of a card-carrying member of the "Grandma Club."
Gale Hammond Gale Hammond is a writer and freelance photographer who has lived in Morgan Hill 24 years. Reach her at GaleHammond@aol.com.
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