All About Me – 101 Things Update

 

 

Self-portrait taken on my recent Shuttertour (reflected in some broken stainless columns outside the old WaMu building)

 

I got some bad news yesterday. 

One of the key things on my 101 Things in 1001 Days list was to repair the damaged ACL in my right knee, which has been very painful and stiff over the summer.

I first injured my leg skiing when I was a student and didn’t have surgery then because sports’ medicine was in its infancy and the recovery would have been long and traumatic.  Maybe I was badly advised then, I don’t know - my current doctor seems to think so - but the upshot is I’ve been living with it for years, getting used to living with the constant dull pain in my knee and thinking that one day, when high-powered jobs, pregnancy, moving to Seattle, having a young child etc. etc. were out of the way I would take the time to have it fixed.

That time was now and I went in for an MRI yesterday, so they could assess the extent of the damage. And it turns out it is much worse than I thought and that the knee joint is so full of arthritis that repairing the ACL would put me in a huge amount of pain. Which is all rather depressing.

My thoughts are turning now to aggressive arthritis management – I’m far too young to have a knee as painful and stiff as it currently is – and wanted to get any advice and help that the Internets have to offer. If you or anyone you know currently suffers from arthritis and has been helped by any sort of therapy, exercise, nutritional change, book, video etc. etc. then I really would LOVE to hear from you.

As a result of the above I’ve had to revise a few things on my list.   Instead of  ‘repair ACL’ , ‘do a triathlon’ ‘go ice skating’ and ‘run a 5k’, I’m going to ‘learn HTML’, ‘sign up for Pilates’, ‘go on an overnight sea kayaking trip’ and something else I haven’t yet thought of.  My revised list is here.

I’ve made progress on some stuff, but haven’t ticked off any one task as completed yet. I’ll blog about stuff as I achieve it – later this week I’ll be blogging about the fabulous Shuttertour I did last Friday with Valentina Vitols, which was the first step in ‘Complete 6 Photography Workshops/Classes’.

Comments

[Zoe]

So sorry to hear that Paola. x

[lou]

i read about this in your facebook. how stupid. i hope you get better soon. i only know arthritis from very old people like my grandmother. you're definitely too young for this. the things you're "deleting" from your current list due to this you can save for the next list. hang on!

[protoworkannie]

take care & pray for you.