I'll back up a bit first; back in September, I went to see my new doctor at Stanford. He turned out to be quite full of himself (he was also being followed by some visiting doctors, so I hope that played a major factor in his attitude) and basically diagnosed me on what he saw rather than adding in my history. He prescribed physical therapy and proclaimed that was the solution to all my problems. While I believed it would help, I never bought that it would solve everything. I went back to the same place I've gone the last few rounds in PT, and to the same therapist. I see her on Mondays and another therapist on Thursday.
She's the one that thought up the first metaphor. During my evaluation (which took two appointments because I'm that complicated..), she told me that my ankle and hip are the criminals here and my knee is the victim. That was pretty much entirely opposite of what I had believed for all these months. Turns out, my ankle is weak and is throwing off my knee, which is throwing off my hip…. and just to add to this equation, she can't rule out the defect in my hip causing problems. So the hip, in turn, is also probably throwing off my knee.
I'm currently a little over half way through the prescription and I'm thinking about stopping.. I have one more appointment so I can talk to her before I really make the decision. Here comes the second metaphor; the other day, I was driving home from PT and was thinking that life was a chess game. Of course, then I started wondering which piece I was. I refuse to be the King, having so much power that I would basically be powerless. The Knight doesn't appeal to me because it is the hardened soldier, moving according to exact regulations. Bishop and Rook are little more appealing in that they can move as far as they want, the only problem is the direction is limited. Then there's the Queen, able to move in any direction and as far as she wants.. I decided this is where I want to be. Unfortunately, while I do feel that in some aspects, most of the time I feel like the pawn; blindly moving forward one step at a time, being used for someone else's end-game. The doctor didn't know anything about me and just fit a diagnosis to me (conveniently one that has an exercise program made up by him!). The physical therapists are trying their best, but I'm just not benefitting from being there because there's some underlying problem that they can't quite grasp. My main therapist keeps trying, but she feels so bad when I get off that table and I still have a horrible limp.
Which brings me to the final metaphor; I wake up every day and step into a mine field. I never know how my leg is going to feel each morning or if the next step I take is going to "blow up". Take into account when I fell down the stairs about a month ago because my knee buckled. Or the swelling that has increased although it was never really a problem before. Or the newest and most baffling symptom; my knee goes numb.
This is where I stand right now... seems to be even more of a spot in limbo than when I started, with no answers in sight.
