The Decline and Fall and Reclining and Icing and Draining and Rising Again of Dave's Right Knee

Yesterday, I went to the doctor's for my right knee and while it wasn't as fun as self-diagnosing and self-medicating, it was probably more informative and more therapeutic-- and it was kind of fun because the resident and the doctor who worked with me were both fairly cute young ladies, which made all the pressing on my knee and twisting and pulling of my leg slightly more tolerable than if it were a couple of dudes-- and that might be sexist, but whatever, I like to believe they were a bit more delicate and definitely more personable than the typical male doctor-- anyway, after all the prodding, they determined that it was a tight IT band and some arthritis related to patellofemoral pain syndrome, which caused some serious swelling and a lot of fluid around my knee, so Dr. Navia said that I could either take naproxen for two weeks or she could numb up my knee and stick a needle in and drain the fluid and then shoot a steroid in there to reduce the swelling-- and while this would hurt a little she promised it wouldn't be too bad-- so I opted for option two, even though I was hungry and I had been there quite a while-- so they numbed me up and started sticking needles into my knee and looking on some ultrasound monitor-- and I wisely looked at the ceiling so as not to see what they were doing, although they did a LOT of talking about what they were doing, I guess because the main doctor was teaching the resident-- so I had to overhear quite a bit of graphic detail about finding pockets of fluid, switching sutures, and how many milliliters of gunk they sucked out-- but they were pleased with all the yucky yellow bloody pus/fluid/gunk they drained and the "debris" they moved out of the way, but the doctor said my knee wasn't going to be happy with her during the night, once the anesthetic wore off-- and so while I was able to walk out of the office and even run up to Thomas Sweets to purchase a gift and Mamoun's for take out-- later in the day and last night my knee really started to throb-- but I took my naproxen, drank a few beers, etc.-- and when I woke up this morning, my knee felt much better and I have full range of motion again-- yesterday, I couldn't straighten my leg because of the swelling, so it looks like I am on the mend.