Knee Scope Surgery

I may be the worst blogger ever. Three months between posts. Nice, Scott.

So two weeks post-surgery to have my meniscus tear in my right knee fixed. Things are progressing well. I'm walking, albeit slowly. Physical therapy three times a week is kicking my ass but it's definitely speeding up the recovery time. And who wouldn't want a little faster recovery time, right?

Basically what they did was go in through two holes just below the kneecap. One hole is for the camera, the other for the surgical tools. Kinda cool what they found in there.

The meniscus is the cartilage in the knee that separates the two bones at the joint. Kind of functions as a gasket of sorts. They don't normally do repairs on people my age because it's a very slow healing process and most of the time doesn't work real well. So they pretty much just slice off the damaged part and leave ya with whatever healthy area remains. Here's a pic of my meniscus showing the tear.



See the stuff that looks like stringy crab meat? Crappy meniscus.

Since they were in there anyway...they decided to cruise around and see what they could find. Wouldn't ya know? The source of all my knee pain was a half-smoked doobie that someone left in my knee. Those darn rastas!



So they took that out too. I think I saw a couple of scrub nurses blazing it up....but then again, I was on some pretty serious pain meds.

Here's the knee all cleaned up.


Notice the shaggy stuff is gone. We'll refer to that as the "never gonna run again" stuff. Anybody else think this looks a little too much like something else?

Surprisingly, I've had very little pain. Only used two of the 30 Vicodin they gave me. I gave the rest of them to Terrell Owens. In hindsight, an error in judgment.

The Name Above The Title

Many have asked about the origin of the name of this here blog. Alright, so only my wife did. It's a nod to the 80's band Talk Talk and a line from their semi-hit of the same name. While not my favorite song or even merely memorable, it represents a bygone era for music that seems lost and gone forever. While I consider myself a child of the 70's, the 80's was the more enjoyable musical era of my life. It was a time when music could be simply fun, without public statement (The Cars, Adam & The Ants, Devo) or life-altering (The Clash, Ramones, Dead Kennedys). Most people I feel, listen to music. I've always lived it.

As far back as I can remember, music was a defining element of who I was. I remember lying on my bed on a Saturday morning writing up my own personal Top 20 each week. It was always a treat to find out who would come in at number one that week...even though it was a list no one saw but me. Music defines eras and for me this statement is very true. It was never merely just the song. It was a moment in time noted with an aural bookmark.

Music today is genre-averse. It would be too simplistic to define the music of today by the decade as we did in the 80's. Back then, Duran Duran could sit next to Whitesnake at a diner counter and get along famously. I don't expect the same would be true with today's current crop of artists. Just as there was no 90's genre of music, the 00's are even more decade ambiguous.

But I digress. So there you have it. For all one of you out there, (who am I kidding, no one's reading this garbage), that is the origin of this oh-so-eloquent gibberish. My 2006 version of my teenage Top 20 countdown. Go forth and blog young man. Blog like the wind.

Really, Scott? A Blog?

I know, I know. How trendy it is to have your own blog. How 2006 of me. So why do it? Dunno. I guess it's the frustrated writer in me. You see, back in high school I wanted to be a serious journalist until I found out how much (actually how little) money they made. Money, or lack thereof, can kill a passion like nobody's business. Then I planned on writing The Mediocre American Novel which of course never materialized either. So fast forward to 2006 and every 13-year old kid with a mouth full of braces has his own blog. So here I come world wide web. For better or for worse, Scott's gone cyber with his thoughts. God help us all.

My guess? You'll be back. Like a car crash that you can't look away from, you'll click that bookmark with a sort of feigned interest just to see what happens next. "Does anyone's mind really work that way?" you'll ponder. Yup, it really does. And yes, it's exhausting. So without further ado, welcome to the jungle.