Decisions, Decisions....

So the surgeon thinks I have a recurring medial meniscal tear, possibly due to some sort of congenital defect. He's sending me for an MRI Arthrogram this afternoon to get a good look at what's going on in there. After that.....we'll see.....

He told me the other day that if I can stand the pain, that I can go ahead and fence division qualifiers and the Reno NAC, and he'd do the surgery afterwards. However, i'm not sure if I can stand the pain. My new knee brace should be in on Friday, and I think it's going to be really cool, so I think I'm going to "test the waters with it" and see how things feel.

I really want to go to Reno and Nationals this year. I'm so bummed about the entire situation. Kaylah and I had an awesome trip to Reno planned, and I certainly don't want to miss it. Nationals is so close to us this year. We've been planning our trip for about a year....

Why does everything have to go wrong at once? My knee, my job, and my best friend moving to Asheville....*sigh*

>:-(

My knee has finally decided to put an interruption in my fun. I've had 2 knee surgeries in the past. Both before I started fencing, and both on the left knee. It's never been painless, but it's never really interferred with my daily life. Until now. It's been getting progressively worse over the past ear or so, and finally, after the tournament last weekend, it's at it's worst. I'm hobbling around on it, and practically living off of icy hot patches. The Advil stopped working weeks ago.

I'm usually pretty stubborn about seeing doctors. At this point, I'm totally ready to make an appointment with someone, but I don't just want to pick a name out of a phone book. I got online to my health insurance's website, and printed out the list of preferred providers who specialize in orthopaedic surgery AND sports medicine. I feel like a sports medicine guy will understand the fact that Nationals and the qualifiers for it are coming up quickly, and taking time off is just not an option for me. It's depressing....really.

To recap the weekend, I went to the Iron maiden in Wilmington. It was fun. It was an all chick tournament, so we had the nice empowerment thing going. We probably won't go to that again though. These people had ZERO qualified referees. They managed to screw up epee! Basically, in sabre especially, if there were 2 lights on a machine, it was a coin flip as to who got the point. They did not play favorites, but they didn't know ROW either. Still, I managed to come in 7th in the epee (poor point control on my part, long story), and 2nd in the sabre.

Everyone keep your fingers crossed about the knee. :mad: