An Appointment With My Family Doctor's Replacement
[ Wednesday September 25th 2019 at 11:45 am ]
The past few weeks have been very challenging for me. During the second week of September I woke up, took a step as I was getting out of my bed and felt a new tear occur in my right knee joint. This is identical to what caused the repeat labral tear in my left hip joint in September 2008 after surgery to repair it 54 weeks before. My right knee joint has never rebound. Instead the swelling has increased 2½ times. The pain when using my right knee joint is terrible. This is further disrupting my sleep at night. With only being able to complete a very modest amount of walking my hip joints have reverted back to the very basic baseline needed to be discharged from hospital following hip replacement surgery.
My family doctor is away for the month of September. I've had an appointment with his replacement for my pain control. He has agreed with my two requests:
- The first is for the medications necessary to control my knee pain.
- The second is for my knee joint to be reimaged by ultrasound. It is entirely possible the meniscus has further tore. An ultrasound is unable to diagnois this. By process of elimination of everything else is intact then there is sufficient evidence that will build on my MRI imaging of May 2019. I don't see any point for Ontario's health care to spend money to re-MRI my right knee joint without surgery lined up. The situation is evolving too quickly.
I am back to figuring out how to manage my day to day life. I've been forced into creative solutions for such a prolonged period of life that I am needing to deal with the real issue. I am hoping this will be profitable. I will need to have a very candid and direct conversation with my family doctor upon his return.