Wednesday, August 22, 2007

Feeling kneeded. Again.

I'm out of hospital and feeling okay (painkillers help, although they are a little strong). The worse-case scenario didn't materialise and I am thankful I didn't need my ACL reconstructed. In the end my meniscus was repaired (by cutting lots of it away) and the doctor punched a hole in the cyst that had also grown on my knee. Hopefully that will start draining away, too.

For the not so squeamish, here's the before and after...

Before
Pre-op knee


After
The result

Friday, August 17, 2007

Slice and dice

It's official - I'm going to be operated on and I'm booked in for Tuesday.

I knew when I injured my knee playing football four weeks ago that it was going to be bad news for me. Straight away I felt something go and I thought "This could be it for the year." Turns out I was right.

The verdict from external examinations is that I've got a very badly torn lateral meniscus in my left knee, a large cyst (the result of significant trauma apparently) and an even-odds chance that I've sustained damage to my anterior cruciate ligament (ACL), which is kind of like the foundation ligament inside the knee joint that is very important for stability of the joint.

At best, I'll have a very large chunk of my meniscus removed (what is left of it anyway - I had a piece removed 11 years ago) and the cyst will be drained of the fluid and left to settle on its own. A medium outcome is that the cyst will have to be surgically removed (which is surgeon's preferred option at the moment) through an incision on the side of the joint. Worst case scenario is all of that mixed in with a knee reconstruction where a piece of my hamstring tendon is removed and used to reinforce the ACL. Across the options recovery to full fitness varies from up to 6 weeks to up to (and beyond) 6 months.

Urgh.

The whole thing is going to cost thousands, too. That's after rebates from Medicare and my health insurance, mind you.

Lots of funky (but ouch, my god, they are going to do what?) video and animations at Orthosports.

Sunday, August 05, 2007

Braiiiins


Braiiiins
Originally uploaded by smperris
In Case of Zombies.

Threadless t-shirt birthday present number 2.

30 days later...

This is definitely a late post. I am aware of that.

I have been absorbing the lessons from my disastrous attempt to spend 30 days actually doing something...well, anything, really.

  1. Have a plan. Knowing what it is you want to do has to be more successful than thinking "Right. It's Monday. What do I want to do now?", because that sucked big time as a method of achieving stuff.
  2. Related to the above, spend some time working out where it is you want to improve. Fumbling and bumbling and guessing and hoping it will come to you is probably not going to work. It didn't for me at any rate.
  3. Failing is okay. Not being able to get it together has shown me the deficiencies in my "plan".

That's it. It took a week to sort out, but that's it. Distilled knowledge, people. Lap it up.

In the short term I'm reacquainting myself with GTD. I had my GTD mojo at the start of the year but it slowly ebbed away as I get a little cocky that I was on top of things. I let my whole system fall apart. Time to rebuild it.

One of the unexpected side-benefits of this process is that my wife has started to get really down with all the clutter we have in our life and our house. We're slowly working on reducing the amount of useless crap we have accumulated. We have both greatly reduced the amount of paperwork we have lying around the house. The shredder has been getting a really good work out. I have also started to be a bit ruthless about what books I will keep and which ones I will get move on. It's been liberating, in a way.

All up, an interesting experience, and one worth trying again after a little bit of preparation.

Wednesday, August 01, 2007

"Mind like water".

That is the state I want to reach.