The ‘Dredge Report

Apologies for the light posting; I’ve been put in charge of another creature’s life, and I’m not yet convinced I’m capable of holding that kind of responsibility. Anyway, this is Splinter. He’s named after the rat in the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles franchise. For the longest time my brothers and I wanted to name a dog after one of the two bad guys in the Ninja Turtles — Bebop and Rocksteady. This is in tribute to that.

He’s young (18 months?), much younger than I originally wanted when I walked into the Humane Society. I’d set my heart on an old, fat, lazy, shy cat who just wanted to live out her remaining years in a safe, comfortable place, namely my lap. This guy is painfully shy yet extremely frisky and energetic once he’s convinced you’re not out to neuter him. He’s already addicted to the ‘nip. He needs to grow into his feet. He’s pretty cute, though.

Hey, remember this? Yeah. As it turns out, it wasn’t all harmless fun. When the mentally unstable drunk homeless guy cornered me in the bus shelter and said something inappropriate and made me escape to the tune of slamming my knee against the metal bus bench, something happened. My knee was injured! Strangely enough, the knee didn’t bother me for the first few weeks afterward, save for the usual bruising and swelling. But at one point I began to feel weird. I began to feel as though my knee would POP or SNAP or TEAR or do some similarly bad thing if I stood on it the wrong way, or put too much pressure on it. After one particularly long hike, I realized that whatever this strange pain was, it wasn’t going away.

After some X-rays and an appointment at the fancy orthopedics wing of the fancy academic medical center, the verdict is that I have a slight meniscal tear. And perhaps some cartilage chipped off. And some ligament strain. Any more detail than that, and I’d have to refer you to WebMD, because I certainly do not speak the Sports Medicine Language. It’s not the worst case scenario, but it’s not great. The doc prescribed some (non-fun) drugs and 6 weeks of physical therapy, at which point she’ll re-assess and tell me exactly how screwed I am and whether surgery is in the distant future.

This also means, no normal physical activities. No running. No strenuous activity at the gym, like Spinning or the treadmill. Certainly no hiking. And while yoga isn’t out, the brand of power yoga I prefer is clearly off limits for now, so I’ve tabled it all until I can figure out which classes I might be able to handle. My options include…physical therapy exercises, and swimming. I bought some goggles online.

This fucking sucks.

Rationally, I know that these kinds of things just happen sometimes. And for awhile I felt angry at the homeless guy, because it’s not even like this was an accident — he went out of his way to be ugly to me, and I’m forced to take on the time, cost, and inconvenience of the consequences. And then someone said to me, “Yeah, but he’s still out there on the street, drunk and mentally ill.” True, very true. But I think we all have limits to our compassion and our “Oh, the humanity!” sense when someone does something so clearly wrong and mean and threatening.

The point of this all is that I’m still in that whiny feeling-sorry-for-myself phase that is so unattractive. To have cultivated this little cupboard of activities that I really enjoy and that make me happy, and then to have them just yanked away — and replaced by hours of stupid physical therapy and expense and having to be around the creepy dudes at the 24 Hour Fitness pool — it just sucks.