Journey to and Through Motherhood: 1Y46W: A Broken Burger and a Torn Knee (1/10/11

On Monday, I had a return visit with my orthopedic surgeon to discuss my MRI results. As he suspected, I have torn cartilage in my knee. I have a tear at the root of the posterior horn of the medial meniscus and a likely tear in the anterior horn of the lateral meniscus. I have both a ganglion cyst and a Baker cyst in the knee joint which he said are commonly formed when the knee is inflamed as a way to protect itself. The good news is that the pain has been a lot better lately and that combined with the fact that my knee is not locking means that I do not need surgery to fix the problem. He gave me a number of exercises to try to strengthen my quad muscles and stabilize my knee as I told him that I really don’t have time for physical therapy right now having just started a new job. I am glad that we have finally found the source of my pain and am even happier that the pain is finally starting to go away. What concerned me quite a bit, though, was that the MRI found that I have lost about 50% of the cartilage in both the lateral and medial tibiofemoral compartments of my knee due to arthritis. My ACL is degenerated as well. I reminded him that I am 34, not 84, and am therefore concerned about the degree of arthritis found on my MRI. He said that I should follow up with my PCP about that and possibly get some blood testing done since I have a family history of both rheumatoid arthritis and osteoarthritis.

The rest of the week was fairly uneventful. On Tuesday, Lily brought me her burger because the bun fell off. She said, “Burger broke, mama fix.” It was very cute and she was most grateful when I put it back together for her. Sometimes it’s good to be a hero!

I am getting more adapted to my new job. I love the independence and trust that I am given. I also love that I get to set my own start time so if I get to work 5 minutes behind one day, it’s no big deal because there is no such thing as being late. Now Paul and I are working the same hours which means that we get home a lot sooner. I am enjoying having more time after work to hang out with Lily and get things done around the house. We had our first study patient this week which confirmed our speculation that the study is huge and is going to be a lot of work but it is very interesting. I had training on Thursday and Friday so I did not work in the PFT lab on Friday. Actually, it was decided by my bosses that because the study is so huge, it needs my full-time support so from next week on, I will be a full-time research assistant. That scares me a bit to no longer have my foot in the door at the PFT lab as it’s the only real job I’ve ever known, but I am glad that they find me valuable enough in my new position to already want to expand my involvement.

We had another uneventful weekend hanging around the house with Lily being her usual goofball self. Her personality never ceases to completely crack me up. Here are some pictures from this week.

After Christmas, Lily had way too many toys in the living room (where we keep the ones she plays with the most) and I felt like I was living in a daycare. To help corral the toys, I bought a new organizer which we put together on Monday. Lily started tearing apart the Styrofoam packaging and declaring that it was snow. Since the house was already a mess, we let her have her fun:

Mischievous smile:

Lily 'helped' by crawling around in the organizer while Paul put it together:

Then she found it great fun to climb in the bins for each shelf:

Watching TV inside a bin:

My silly girl played a game on Sunday where she put 2 binkies in her mouth then leaped in the air and slammed down on her butt, popping the binkies across the room. She found it great fun and apparently her diaper is a good shock absorber because it didn't seem to hurt at all. Here she is stuffing the binkies in: