Wolverine

Over the past couple of weeks, I have been referred to as Wolverine by several people. Though my friends and family are probably sick of hearing about my terrible genes and awesome healing powers, I have decided to finally share the epic saga that was my leg growth with the blogging world.

Sometime in June I started to have pain in my right leg, just below my knee. I'm prone to doing stupid things that result in random injuries, as I'm a pretty eccentric person who gets excited easily. So, I thought nothing of this throbbing pain at first, but as the weeks went by and pain was still there, along with a rather large bump on my leg, I started to wonder what was going on. What kind of pain? Think of a headache that never goes away...and is in your knee.

After my family's annual Myrtle Beach trip in July, I decided to get it checked out and made an appointment with an Orthopedic Doc for late July.

The initial diagnosis was bursitis of the hip and knee. Not too shabby, nothing some rest and stretching couldn't fix. It was also an excuse to not run fo

r a while...I'll take it! The Doc also ordered some x rays

to be safe. Turns out those x rays showed something a little different from bursitis...a bone growth. My favorite analogy is to say my leg was like a tree that grew a new branch. Pretty cool if you think about it.

The official term for my growth is exostosis osteochondroma. So fancy, even my spell check doesn't have any suggestions for what I meant to type.

Now, my doctor is no Hawkeye Pierce. He may be great with a knife, but he has the people skills of a rock. Okay, maybe the people skills of a blade of grass, after all, pet rocks used to be all the rage. After the x rays were taken, he walked back into my room and said “So, I still think you have bursitis, but you also have a bone growth. I'm going to get an MRI to rule out cancer.” Okay. I could get behind that. He was friendly, let me know what was going to happen, and what to expect. Little did I know, that was the longest sentence he would ever say to me.

Insurance is great to have, but it stinks to use. My initial MRI was declined because I didn't have 4 weeks of physical therapy first. My Physical Therapist nearly laughed in my face when I explained my situation and he kindly replied, “I can't do anything to make that bone go away.”

Four Weeks of physical therapy later and I was given the go ahead for the MRI. Nothing like laying on an MRI table on a Sunday morning before mass in a dress...

The MRI concluded that the bone growth was beni

gn and the doc decided to try a cortisone shot as a last resort before chopping me up. That was terrible. The shot itself wasn't bad, but about an hour later I thought I was going to die. I think of myself as having a pretty high pain tolerance, but this was something I had never experienced. Though I have yet to go through child birth, I would rate this as the worst pain I have felt in my life thus far. Luckily the excruciating pain subsided after a few days, but it didn't do anything for the throbbing pain that had been their since June.

I'm sure you can guess what came next. Yep, the knife. At this point I was so ready to have this thing out of me, I barely thought about the consequences it might have on my trip to Disney World in 3 weeks. The doc gave me an initial prognosis of 6-12 weeks on crutches. I told him I had a vacation at the end of the month and asked him if I should wait till I was back to get fixed. He replied, “Do it now so you can get to the front of the lines at Disney.” Good point. I was in.

The following week, I had the surgery which lasted an h

our. My sister-in-law was gracious enough to shuttle me back and forth and take care of her one and a half year old at the same time. She was pretty disappointed I didn't have any crazy hallucinations or profess my love for the world when I came out of anesthesia, but I'm a pretty weird person, I don't know how weirder I could get.

Remember how I said my Doc had no people skills? Yeah, he came in before the surgery and said, “I'm going to cut here (draws on my leg) and send it to the lab” After surgery, he came in and said “Well, I cut it out, see you next week.” Wow.

How big was it, you ask?

About this big:
Yeah, pretty crazy

Well, this story is getting mighty long. To cut to the chase (pun intended), and the title of this post, I healed fast. I was cleared to drive in 5 days, off crutches in 6, running in 10, and almost 100% for my trip to Disney World in 15 days. I am awesome.

I have a pretty wicked 3 inch scar that will make for a good story one day.

11 days after surgery:

today:

During my senior year of college when I started to wonder and worry about what I was going to do once I made it into the “real world,” my Mother sat me down and said something along the lines of, “I don't care what you do, as long as you have health insurance.” Those words stuck to me like a leech in a swamp and I'm thankful it did. This surgery was probably the best thing I have bought myself in a while.

Though I'd like to attribute my absence from blogging to said injury, the truth is that I'm just a very lazy blogger with a very crazy life. Hopefully my hiatus is now officially over.