Euphemisms play a role in life, particularly if you're dealing with the human body, with foibles of its own.
Case in point? Our human body of note of late, my daughter's. Specific part, her knee. Yep, the bad one. Yep, the one she 'tweaked' several weeks back. 'Tweak' in this case means 'broke off a dime sized piece of cartilage that's now free floating in the knee and causing no end of pain, swelling, general angst..but it's hard to say for sure because it's cartilage and doesn't really show up well on an MRI.'
The really nasty part about this, though, is the REASON for the cartilage breaking off. See, the ACL, the one they ALREADY REPLACED not quite three years ago...has stretched. Which is bad if you're an ACL is your sole job in life is to support my daughter's knee so she can play the game she loves loves loves and finish college while she's at it. Because if you're stretched, and you're that ACL? You let unnatural movement occur in said knee, which can cause other issues, like, say, a cartilage chip.
She went through rehab, got a custom brace made (ala Tom Brady's), stretched and swam and strengthened and, again, worked her ass off to do the right thing. And then she, for the first time since her tweak, trotted out onto the field to see what that leg would do.
First shot on goal, the knee buckled.
Obviously, that's not good, for about a hundred reasons.
Cut to this weekend, when we're all trying to be positive and supportive and make the best decisions around this new obstacle...and at a separate times I believe all of us cried a little. I mean, why in the holy fuck does this keep happening? How does a perfectly good cadaver ACL FAIL? Why our daughter?
And so on.
Now, she's met with her surgeon again, who's a very nice, well-informed, well-intentioned, respected, experienced, competent surgeon. And what he says, and what her surgeon here says are reallly close, with the exception of her East Coast surgeon having a couple of new, less invasive techniques to bring to the ACL reconstruct/cartilage repair effort.
Looks like it's gonna be surgery. In RI. In two weeks.
And yes, I'm gonna be there.
Picture, if you will...me, staying in an apartment with four college girls, one of whom is recovering from major knee surgery. I'll be doing the thing that I do best, which is nurturing. I'll be whipping up tons of comfort-y, healthy food, watching endless movies, soothing where possible and generally doing my best to make my girl's first few days after yet another ungodly procedure as easy as possible.
I decided a little whimsy is in order, given the gravity of the overall situation. That looks like this apron:
and these clogs:
These aren't to scale, of course. My apron is way bigger than my shoes.
But you knew that.
Case in point? Our human body of note of late, my daughter's. Specific part, her knee. Yep, the bad one. Yep, the one she 'tweaked' several weeks back. 'Tweak' in this case means 'broke off a dime sized piece of cartilage that's now free floating in the knee and causing no end of pain, swelling, general angst..but it's hard to say for sure because it's cartilage and doesn't really show up well on an MRI.'
The really nasty part about this, though, is the REASON for the cartilage breaking off. See, the ACL, the one they ALREADY REPLACED not quite three years ago...has stretched. Which is bad if you're an ACL is your sole job in life is to support my daughter's knee so she can play the game she loves loves loves and finish college while she's at it. Because if you're stretched, and you're that ACL? You let unnatural movement occur in said knee, which can cause other issues, like, say, a cartilage chip.
She went through rehab, got a custom brace made (ala Tom Brady's), stretched and swam and strengthened and, again, worked her ass off to do the right thing. And then she, for the first time since her tweak, trotted out onto the field to see what that leg would do.
First shot on goal, the knee buckled.
Obviously, that's not good, for about a hundred reasons.
Cut to this weekend, when we're all trying to be positive and supportive and make the best decisions around this new obstacle...and at a separate times I believe all of us cried a little. I mean, why in the holy fuck does this keep happening? How does a perfectly good cadaver ACL FAIL? Why our daughter?
And so on.
Now, she's met with her surgeon again, who's a very nice, well-informed, well-intentioned, respected, experienced, competent surgeon. And what he says, and what her surgeon here says are reallly close, with the exception of her East Coast surgeon having a couple of new, less invasive techniques to bring to the ACL reconstruct/cartilage repair effort.
Looks like it's gonna be surgery. In RI. In two weeks.
And yes, I'm gonna be there.
Picture, if you will...me, staying in an apartment with four college girls, one of whom is recovering from major knee surgery. I'll be doing the thing that I do best, which is nurturing. I'll be whipping up tons of comfort-y, healthy food, watching endless movies, soothing where possible and generally doing my best to make my girl's first few days after yet another ungodly procedure as easy as possible.
I decided a little whimsy is in order, given the gravity of the overall situation. That looks like this apron:
But you knew that.
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