Self Diagnosis [34 Days Pre-Surgery]

It’s 10 days since the dreaded POP. No major swelling had occurred (but a little did), and I was slowly but surely gaining back range of motion, and trust, in my left knee. I iced it, rested it, elevated it… I sat out of my indoor soccer, volleyball and flag football games since the injury and I thought I was on the road to recovery.

I’d spent a lot of my time researching. I had been asking around of friends and family in the medical field, and also friends who’ve had knee injuries, as well as searching online … What could this POP mean? For peace of mind, I made a doctor’s appointment with a doctor who’d done knee surgery on a soccer teammate of mine, Jeff. I didn’t think mine was as bad as his, but I wanted to see someone with experience. [Jeff was injured in summer of ’08 and was back out playing ultimate Frisbee by November ’08. I had to trust his physician!]

I almost cancelled my appointment. I didn’t want to waste the doctor’s time, my time, or my medical deductible money just to have someone tell me, “Rest it. You’re fine!” But since I didn’t use my insurance at all last year and wouldn’t mind a little time away from work, I figured I would just go to the appointment and be done with it. I imagined walking in, telling my story and getting a cock-eyed look from the doctor as he said, “and you bothered to come in for this?” as we chuckled about it, shook hands, and rode off into our respective sunsets.

Cut to reality – An assistant leads me into the exam room, I’m told to put on paper shorts and that x-rays will be taken before I see the doctor. Thinking with my wallet I say, “ACTually, could I just meet with the doctor first? My injury was over a week ago, it’s feeling a lot better and I think it may be nothing. I don’t want to waste everyone’s time doing x-rays if I don’t have to.”
The assistant didn’t speak up right away, but the look she gave me said This is not how things work here! She started to say, “Well…” but luckily the doctor poked his head into the exam room and said (quite hurriedly), “HiI’mDr.Shapiro; What’sthestoryhere?”

I repeat what I said to the assistant, mentioned what I was doing when I hurt it and of the POP I heard, and the doctor agreed he’d examine me in a minute, sans x-rays.

One small step for me, one big savings to my medical deductible! Ha! I think to myself, try and scam me with your ‘standard’ x-rays? No way. Noooo way. Needless to say, I think I’ll be out of there w/in minutes of the exam.

The doctor eventually returned, and took a look at my knee. Sitting on the exam table with my legs extended out in front of me, he asked me to straighten them. “That doesn’t look very straight!” he said. I kind of chuckle, saying, “Ok ok, now just a second, it is still a little tender!” and I gingerly work it as straight as I can, nearly identical to my other leg.

“Hmm,” the professional said. “Now, swing your legs over the edge of the table”

The next minute and a half (read: felt like 30 minutes) were… unpleasant. I’ve never been scared of the doctor, but then again I’ve never gone in for anything besides routine check-ups. Fillings at the dentist is the biggest ‘procedure’ I’ve had, and while maybe those aren’t pleasant, I’ve felt I’ve conquered such visits, however insignificant, with bravery and dignity! Now, I understand why people are scared of the doctor.

First, Dr. Shapiro took my ‘bad’ leg, and tried to jiggle the lower half away from the upper half (holding the upper half stationary) like it was a loose tooth. PUSH-PULL-JIGGLE-JIGGLE-JIGGLE. All the while I am gasping and sucking in air through my teeth like it’s going out of style. POKE-PROD-“DOESTHISHURT?”-“STSTTST;YEAHKINDA”-POKE-PUSH. Sweet Jesus, thank god THAT’S over.

He does the same thing to my right leg. This doesn’t hurt nearly as much (nor am I as scared when he goes to do it). Then he spoke these words and my whole body shuddered: “Now, try to remember how this feels. I am going to go back to your ‘bad’ leg and repeat what I just did [WHAT?!] and you tell me if one leg feels more loose than the other at the knee.”

Please no, please no, please no. Oh maaaaan. NOO! I think. “Ok,” I say aloud.

I try to relax my body and legs (HOW?!) and take a deep breath. Dr S then proceeds to repeat the PUSH-PULL-JIGGLE sequence (see above) and I am thinking just break the damn thing off already!

Needless to say he felt the left (injured) knee was looser than the other, and he said, “I think you have an ACL tear. You need an MRI.” If it wasn’t torn before, it is now! I thought… But at this point, I didn’t want to disagree because that might mean going through that exam again. My eyes did start to tear up at this point, and I’m not sure if it’s because of the unofficial bad news I’d just gotten, or the cost of the MRI, or because after 10 days of recovery my knee suddenly felt like the injury happened just minutes ago…

The MRI
Luckily they were able to get me an MRI appointment for that morning, in the same building. After a long wait I’m told to follow someone into the room with the machine. We take a little lift up to the ‘control room’ of the MRI. It wasn’t like what I’ve seen on scrubs, and truly that’s all I had to go off of! But the staff was friendly and soon I was being slid into the machine with a setting around my left knee and headphones on my ears to try to drown out the noise of the machine.

A half an hour later I was out and had a CD in my hand which I was told had all the MRI images from my knee. I was to bring it to my next appointment with the doctor, and until then I just had to wait. When I went home for lunch I played around with the CD they’d given me, thinking I knew what I was looking at, when truly I didn’t. But it was fun to look either way!

After spending half a day at work looking for images of an MRI with a torn ACL, I was determined to self-diagnose. Once I was home and looking at the CD (and learned how to see ALL the images in succession) I found some key sections that looked exactly like the tears I’d seen online. This might be when denial stepped in and I told myself, hey, let’s let the professionals handle this, shall we?

Then it dawned on me. Uncle Jimmy! Of course! He’s an orthopedic surgeon, and I can send HIM the images and see! So, via Aunt Judy, I passed along the images and waited patiently for a reply…