Foreshadowing Run Amok: two leaps backward, one step forward

Step One: I finally caught the Professor’s crud: sore throat, fatigue, laryngitis, and all that stuff.

Step Two: My knee continued to hurt when I was traveling and a follow up blood test from last Friday shows increases in the numbers in tests for infection. That may not seem like a big deal, but I am told that the remedy to cure infection in replacement parts is another surgery to clean things out.

The Internet says a “spacer filled with antibiotics” is placed for six weeks, followed by a 2nd total knee replacement six weeks later. My doctor said we’ll talk about remedies after we find out the results.

Have a good weekend, he said and smiled as he walked out the door. Well, wasn’t that special?

My suspect tests were for C-reactive protein and Sedimentation rate. There’s some irony there given my occupation. I work for a Soil and Water Conservation Commission. Who knew that I, like some Waters of the US, could be dealing with internal pollutants. Perhaps the doctor will write me a TMDL Implementation Plan with best management practices for voluntary (more likely, mandatory) compliance?

His assistant aspirated 10ml of joint fluid yesterday (that was fun, the needle was about 20″ long and thicker than you’d like to imagine) and they’re testing joint fluid at two different labs, one of them back East.

On the positive side, I don’t have a fever and the joint fluid is not visibly cloudy, so it seems less likely. I’m also slightly relieved to hear that only 1 in 100 knee replacements result in infection. However, that little usually-suppressed suspicion that I am, after all, truly special fought its way to the surface yesterday to remind me that if anyone could be that one, it’s me.

Step Three: I’m home today, so I’ll write more on my book. That does make me happy. It’s coming together nicely and I’m finding lots of ways my future has been foreshadowed by my past.

The working title for now? Home is No Place: sometimes going back is the only way forward.

Yikes. Foreshadowing may be a nice literary device, but I don’t even want to consider it’s applicable to my knee too. If it is and if the Internet is correct about the two surgeries and three months of recuperation necessary to fix things, that would be two great big leaps backward and an example of foreshadowing run horribly amok.

On the positive side, I would have plenty of time to finish my book.