"You Have A Pretty Significant Injury"

Yep, that's EXACTLY what the specialist said to me Wednesday afternoon. Now imagine my mouth dropping to the floor as the words came out of his mouth. Another story begins...and as always...play by play!

After returning home from our cruise my family physician order a MRI. The MRI itself was cake, and by this point the original pain was that had been excruciating was more mild, but obviously everything was "normal" or I wouldn't have needed the MRI! The MRI lasted about 45 minutes, and then the 3-4 business day wait last 5 days! When i got the call from the family doctors nurse. She says " Well, the good news is that there are no torn ligaments, but there looks like there might be a little ruffed up cartilage and some arthritis, so Dr. Jeff wants to go ahead and send you to a specialist for a follow up." Now that is exactly what she said..."a follow up." So, when I go to the specialist appointment the next day I assume he is going to tell me to suck it up, maybe send me to physical therapy to get it back to normal again, but NEVER did i expect him to say "You have a pretty significant injury." So...after I lifted my jaw back into place, I asked what he suggested. He said the MRI wasn't as clear as he liked since the injury was more bone related rather than ligament damaged. He did a couple other Xrays (which this Xray experience was much more pleasant than the Houston experience!)After looking at the xrays taken in his office he showed me exactly what the problem was. I then told him I really wanted to avoid surgery if at all possible. He seriously looked at me like i was the biggest loon on the planet! He said, "you can't walk normally, right?" I said, "No." He said " And you want to walk normally?" Me: "Yes." Him: "Then we better do surgery." He reassured me by saying that he wasn't just gung-ho about always doing surgery, but if it was his wife or daughter he would be telling them the same thing. This was not going to get better on it's own, and there might be more damage inside than he could see in the MRI and xrays. So once he convinced me it was absolutely necessary, we looked at options.The medical term for the injury is an OCD lesion of the femoral condyle... Basically there is wearing away and breakage of the very bottom of my femur bone and it's cartilage. He won't know the extent of damage or exactly what's wrong until he is in the surgery. The surgery won't last more than 1-1.5 hours (at the longest) but is somewhat nerve racking! The procedure is to go in and remove "debris" as well as smooth edges of ruffed up bone and cartilage...THEN depending on how bad the bone actually is itself the will do what is called a micro-fracture procedure...which he said is basically drilling up into the bone to try to get bone marrow to come down...after talking to the nurse yesterday, they hope this will not have to be done, but then again they won't know until he gets in there. BUT this was somewhat encouraging news because the doctor told me at the appointment that was just the plan. He would clean everything up as well as do the micro-fracture. (Recovery time is much longer with the micro-fracture!)The only pleasant thing about this whole deal would be if that part of the procedure isn't happen! I have hoped and prayed every day that it would just "pop" again like it has in the past and miraculously I would be able to walk normally again. But if I don't get my miracle I have been praying for the past 3 weeks, I will be put out tomorrow morning at 11am. Please pray for it all to go well, and for recovery to be speedy. Also please pray for Brett to have patience, because this has been a struggle for him already and it's only gonna get worse. And also pray for the people keeping my kids! The major load will be on Gma Oakley and Aunt Monica, but I know other aunts, Gmas and friends will help too! It's gonna be a kinda hectic few weeks, but HOPEFULLY it will all be better in the end! Thanks for all the thoughts a prayers through this crazy ride! Hopefully it will be over sooner than later!