Coming home from errands on Sunday afternoon, I felt like hell. Queasy and dry from sitting in the car so long. Exhausted from managing the kids in environments designed specifically for consumer coercion. Flabby and crooked from three months of forced inactivity.
Yeah. I was a treat to be around.
Six urgent messages on my phone earned exactly one text reply before I told Mike I needed yoga and officially checked out for two hours. My body ached and pulled and stretched. Drawing through warrior poses, my knee felt unstable but didn’t hurt. Shoulders screamed and then let go. Quads knotted, trembled, released. My brain – spinning hard – whirred down from high-frequency whine… to clicks… to hum. In corpse pose, I sank into the earth. And felt better.
Monday was busy. This week is packed with projects for my kids and my crew. We have parents and grandparents who deserve good kid-made gifts. And kids already levitating with Santa excitement who need busy hands. My three-year-olds worked hard on sock snowmen, with all of the careful measuring, pouring, turn-taking and choice-making required. (I AM SO PROUD OF THEM!) My five-year-olds came home from kindergarten and did the same (adding the requisite princess drama). And after the usual mid-afternoon cleaning and tidying and laundry-folding, I finger-knit scarves for those who worried about their snowmen catching cold, mediated toy disputes, and comforted stuffies with limbs crushed by raging troodons.
Good day!
I was cleared for low-impact cardo at my last physio session, but had been putting it off because my knee still didn’t feel quite right. Strong, but loose – if that makes any sense. Monday night, I wrapped gifts for my dayhome kids, got my bike set up on the stationary trainer, got the kids into bed. And then, at long last, set about rebuilding my race base with a 30 minute ultra-low-resistance spin.
After about 25 minutes, it started to hurt.
Bad.
It hurt like something under my knee cap was on fire and had begun melting the muscles and supporting ligaments down into my ankle and up into my hip. Like an acetylene torch had been sparked and lit and turned on full blast at the side of my leg. I got off my bike and headed up the stairs to get an ice pack. Except my knee refused to support my weight and my quads and hamstrings were screaming.
What the fuck?! I wasn’t even sweating!
I did not man up. I did not put on my big girl panties and take it like a woman. I had a full-on class five tantrum that left me bawling in the basement with an ice-pack tensored to my knee and a hot bath running.
FUCK!
When I woke up this morning, my knee felt fine. Minor aches, some resistance on the stairs, but more-or-less the way it had felt the week previous. Last night, my husband had tried to tell me the pain could’ve been related to my time off the bike. Like my knee was a new shoe that needed breaking in, or some shit like that.
You can imagine how receptive I was to THAT nugget of wisdom.
But what if he was right? I mean, maybe getting back into training is supposed to hurt for a little while? I am not afraid of pain. I am afraid of stasis. I am afraid of having a “bad knee” indefinitely, and watching the softness of sedentary turn into the flab of limited mobility and then the crushing fatigue of poor health.
‘Cause I’m a glass-half-full kinda girl.
At physio tonight, I heard things like “treatment plateau”, the potential for cortisol injections, and a renewed discussion of ligament damage. We talked about the wait list for the publicly funded MRI and how much I don’t want to support private medicine and how the MRI clinic up the street could get me in within days….
All I have to do is call and make an appointment and show up with my debit card.
All I have to do is vote with my dollars for a privately owned and operated imaging clinic in a country where healthcare is purportedly free.
If I pay for an MRI, I’m giving my spot on the public waiting list to someone who can’t afford it.
But NO ONE who needs an MRI should have to pay for it. If it is necessary, it is supposed to be FREE.
I’ll have my results within weeks, not months. There would be more than a trial-and-error basis for my treatment plan.
I don’t support private medicine.
Surgery or cortisol injections could have me running full distances in six to eight weeks. IF my doctor could see the damage.
How is it right for me to jump the line just because I can pay for it? How is it right for anyone to have to wait, just because they can’t?
If everyone who could afford private medical services paid for them, those who could not afford it wouldn’t have to wait.
I don’t believe that. This is so wrong.
I could race again. This spring.
FUCK!
My brain is spinning again, and it’s too late for yoga. I’m too tired to tantrum and too drained to fight.
So, I ask you: What would you do?
Pingback: My First MRI and Other Bizarre Experiences | The Valentine 4: Living Each Day
Wow. I think I would pay for the MRI. But I know that the price for you is much more than the dollars. Good luck with your choice.
I am going to pay for the MRI. Politically, it’s one of those grey area decisions – I’m still not sure it’s the right thing. But it’s time for me to work on healing, and I can’t do that unless my doctor and physiotherapist can see the damage. Here’s to a perfect world, right? We might get there, one day.
Desi, it may not be pc but I would go for the MRI sooner too. You never know what other issues may be at stake until a check-up/MRI/test reveals them.
Nothing is stopping US from helping others, but when it comes to personal health issues, you simply must act.
Thanks, Neeks. I’m okay with taking a year off from racing, if that’s what it comes to. I’m not any kind of world class athlete and as much as I miss running, I could live without it for a year. But not forever. And when my doctor and physiotherapist started talking about long-term pain-management, I started getting really worried about “forever”. So, yes, it’s time to find out what’s going on inside that knee, even if it conflicts with my politics. And then I’ll just hope really, really hard for full recovery. Thanks for your prayers, sweet lady :)
You’re asking a “Murken” here–a south-of-the-border chick who is *infuriated* with the state of US health care, in a don’t-get-me-started kind of way. But you’re also asking someone who has family members whose agony with various deeply traumatic health issues force this sort of question on us right smartly, and me, I’m right there with ET when she says if you love your kids enough to do it for them, you should love yourself enough to do it for you. And for them, too, when it comes down to it. My mama’s 4th and 5th back surgeries are neither affordable nor a fun prospect, but we are all LEAPING on the bandwagon for her to have them done as soon as humanly schedule-able and at whatever cost, because not only has she been in (literally) unspeakable agony with her disastrous spinal infirmities, it’s quite true that ‘as goes Mom, so goes the family’, and we all–especially Dad, her chief caregiver–suffer too. I know, too, from these same family members (Mom, my spouse, and others) that injured parts not only become unstable through the initial injury and all of the down time, therapies and compensatory stresses but can remain so and re-injure easily. You’ve faithfully followed the protocols despite your urge to do otherwise, and it hasn’t cured you. I can’t see any reason to deny yourself any attempts at further insight and treatment that you can afford.
Okay, that’s my *ten* cents. But I only rant because you’ve become so important to me and I can’t stand “seeing” you like this! :)
Thanks, Kathryn. ((hugs)) I’m so sorry that your mum is going through such pain. If it were my mum who needed an MRI, as with my children, I wouldn’t have waited a heartbeat to just get it scheduled and get it done. Where I struggle, in part, is in that my pain is manageable. It’s not debilitating. I can still work, still walk, still live my life. I just can’t run, or jump, or generally move my body at speed. I can’t train and I can’t compete. And that “can’t” is driving me crazy. If my injury were constantly excruciating or debilitating, my government would have paid for the MRI and treatment months ago.
Sigh.
Thanks so much for your cents and your sense, sweet lady. I’m sending healing thoughts and virtual hugs to your mum and your family.
This is such an interesting perspective. Universal healthcare is such a controversial subject in the U.S…although, taking out a debit card to pay for even an MRI would prove to be very costly without private insurance. Our insurers actually pay very little toward the cost of the services which would be charged in full to someone paying out of pocket (which means they probably couldn’t afford insurance). Hope your knee heals soon!
It’s a very controversial subject here too, right now, because provinces like Alberta (where I live) are looking to spend less public money by permitting more private healthcare options. On the one hand, I fear the descent into a system similar to the United States’ where a less restricted profit motive seems to have driven up the price of services to dangerous heights. On the other hand, I’m grateful for the option to get a private MRI. And even more grateful that my husband’s employer provides a benefits package that covers these kinds of costs.
Alberta has a mandated maximum fee that private service providers can charge, based on whatever service they’re providing. So, for example, an MRI costs the vendor something like $350 an hour to operate. A publicly held MRI clinic gets $440 per hour from the government. A private MRI clinic can charge the patient between $500 and $700 depending on the length of the scan, but no more than that. For now, anyway.
I hope my knee heals soon, too! Thanks for the kinds thoughts!
The Edmonton Tourist made a great point.
Glad you decided to have the MRI done sooner, and so glad that you cared enough to even question your decision. Hope that makes sense. You care enough to want to support what you believe in, and that’s one reason we keep coming back to read!
Hope the results are encouraging.
Thanks, Melanie. I hope the results are good, too. Anything has to be better than flying blind, right?
Hard to make socially acceptable decisions when your own knee is on fire. I hear you!
Oh, honey. Yes, all objectivity flies out the window at that point, doesn’t it?
Would you do it for your children? If yes, then love yourself that much too.
Yes. In a heartbeat. Without a second thought. For my children, I would have done this months ago. Thanks for the perspective.
You make a lot of sense.
Kristin is very wise.
Will you feel worse with the uncertainty and the not training than you will with the paying to find out? Would this really be selling your soul to private medicine, or is it a test?
I’m not sure. I opted to go with the private clinic via our health insurance coverage, and I’m still not sure how I feel about it. I am thrilled that there will finally be an end to all the uncertainty. But I also feel like a sell-out. Protesting private medicine is supposed to be more important to me than losing a single race season. Except that it’s not. Because I’m such a fatalist, I can’t help thinking: What if this is the last race season I get? At the end of next season, if my family’s situation changes, or if school gets too busy, or if something happens to my kids, or if something happens to me…. I think the weight of regret would be heavy if I knew I could have those few more races and refused to get off my high horse to make it happen.
And, yes, Kristin is very wise. I’m grateful for her friendship :)
I always feel so clumsy-mouthed commenting in your blog, but I’m going to do so anyway… Personally, I think it’s all a question of priorities. Personal priorities. I hurt my own knee over a year ago, randomly, during the warm-up portion of a cardio class I’d been participating in for years. First I denied it and tried to ignore it. Then I started scaling back on my class participation, favoring my knee, figuring I’d get back to it gradually. Then I stopped going to class at all, thinking in the back of my mind that I should get it checked out “one of these days”. That was six months ago. Obviously, this has not been a high priority for me, even though maybe it should be.
But biking, triathlon training, swimming (with kicks!) are clearly a HUGE deal to you. Some people splurge on clothing, makeup, jewelry, hand bags(?!), fine dining, extravagant vacations, expensive cars,… I think you should splurge on an MRI. This does not need to be a life-long change of paths. I’m sure you will hurt yourself again one day, and happily wait in line. But right now, when racing is such a core part of you, I’d vote to give yourself this (admittedly strange) Christmas present. Just my two cents, mellowed out with a glass of wine…
It’s funny – I had more or less made up my mind when I woke up this morning. I called the MRI clinic and then my doctor’s office and told both that I would be in touch in January to just get it done. And then Mike called mid-afternoon to tell me that our benefits would cover the cost and I was just OVER THE MOON! It’s funny how having our health insurance pay for the procedure makes using a private clinic more palatable to me. It shouldn’t…. Maybe I need some wine, too.