“Popped Knee”

About three weeks ago, I was sitting at my dining room table, then somewhere around 9 PM I went to stand up and heard a loud pop. I had never before felt pain like that. That was on a Thursday. On Friday evening I called for an ambulance to take me to the closest hospital. Unfortunately, that was Mary Washington Hospital in Fredericksbug, Virginia.

After an almost 6 hour wait sitting in the emergency room, someone came back to wheel me back to see a doctor. I just lost it and wailed at the nuring assistant who wheeled me to an ioen style emergency room with a bed.Unlucky for me, the person I wailed on was a physician assistant with an attitude who was an expert in passive aggressive behavior. I never got to see a doctor before they sent me home. They took a quick x-ray of my knee and she came over to tell me they were sending me home, and that there was nothing they could do for me.

I tried to explain I would be unable to navigate the two flights of stairs at home, that I was a multuple stroke victim, and was a fall risk. She wasn't buying it. So they sent me home. My husband picked me up and drove me to Virginia Hospital Center in Alexandria.

The folks at Virginia Hospital Center, two subway stops from D.C., admitted me in less than a half hour, and put me in a double room (I didn't know there were double rooms at VHC.

They sent me to Virginia Hospital Center (VHC for short) in Alexandria. Even though almost all of the rooms in VHC are single rooms, this time Kaiser would only pay for a double room. They put me in a room with a screaming sickle cell anemia patient with a foulest language, worst temper, and rudest manner I have ever seen in a human being. For two solid days this was nonstop. The nurses called the cops on him but to no effect.

I waited and waited and waited and waited for them to do an MRI of my knee. All the time having to put up with the twenty-something screaming lunatic next to me. They even had me set to go to an outpatient rehab center before the MRI was taken. However later that day, the orthopedic specialist came in and told me that it was “just arthritis.“

A few years earlier I had had a steroid shot and my left knee where the pop occurred, and had recently had another steroid shot in my right knee as well.

What to do, what to do.

They sent me home without a walker, a cane, not even crutches. After all. Even though I literally could not walk, get out of bed, or pee on my own - off I went with nothing. Nothing except an astoundingly shitty attitude and difficulty standing. I was looking forward to having two flights of stairs to climb up when I got home, and pretty much dreaded the thought. I already have balance issues from previous strokes, so to say I am a fall risk is an understatement of the year.

The next few days were up and down, good days, bad days, followed by some really bad days. Some days I was just sore, other days I had never known or had to endure the agony that seemed to go on for a week or two.

Then quite by accident, I discovered something, for me, that affected how I felt, how I walked, and being a diabetic, how well I could see. It had to do with my diet.