Larry & Sonia: July 2009

Friday, July 24, 2009

playing at Metropolitan GC in mid July

great day to stay nice in 4 layers of tops...but I have the shorts
ready to break out at a minutes notice...not sure I will get to use
the shorts in nice breezy day in low 50s

my friend (yes I have ONE) Bryan Barnett

in the middle of summer ...it is colder than he'll out here

Thursday, July 16, 2009

my knees again...ugh!

Here is a picture of my knees...can't see the rattles or slight blood leak so they don't do a whole hell of a lot of good, do they? (click the picture...there are comments on the xrays)

My primary care doc found that I was slightly anemic in May 2009 when i went for my annual physical, but he was unable to find out why after several (too damn many) blood tests.

Sonia made me go see the knee doctor a couple of weeks ago because my right knee hurt all the time and was continually swollen and I could not control the pain with the pain meds. My friends thought I was exercising too much and wanted me to slow down some. We saw his nurse practitioner and she had me go back on Celebrex twice a day. It helped some but the pain and swelling stayed. She also said the doctor may want to draw off the fluid to analyze it but she did not think my anemia was related to my knee. We went back to see the doctor July 15, 2009 to hear what he had to say. He was concerned about being a bit anemic but did not think it was related to the knee. He did tell us about Hemathrosis (blood in joints) but said it was rare. He was concerned about the swelling lasting so long and wanted to look at the fluid on my knee, but he did not think he would find blood in the joint. He drew 60cc of fluid off (which turned out to be mostly blood which he was not expecting) and it hurt like hell when he put that needle in my knee joint! Then he tried to fix the slight blood leak by injecting Cortisone. We won't know if it works for a while yet. If it swells back up again and fills back up then it did not work. Sonia stayed to watch but was pretty much scrunched in the corner not liking what she was seeing. The doc didn't like it either since he was expecting a somewhat clear fluid. He said it was because I don't produce much scar tissue from the operation which usually stops this bleeding in the joint. That is both good and bad, first the good: he said I'm very healthy which means I don't create much scar tissue then the bad: that means I can develop small blood leaks in the veins in my knee...sucks doesn't it?

Sure hope it works because I don't like the alternatives: arthroscopic surgery to find and stop the leak or even worse open the knee back up to find and stop it.

The one funny part of the whole thing is that I asked if he was going to test the blood he drew off my knee joint. He was annoyed (not at me, but at what he found) saying "NO, I know what it is" as he threw the fluid container in the sink!

I sure hope the Cortisone fixes it because I do not want to have another operation.

He did say I should continue my exercising everyday and not slow down...so I played golf and took golf lessons today...knee hurts some but not as bad as it has been.