Last fall the wife was fairly seriously injured by a hydrandea macrophalla. While trying to remove the reluctant pom-pom producing plant from its prominent spot in the front yard to a lesser noticeable spot in the backyard, the hydrangea fought back by not releasing its grip on Mother Earth.
Determined to win this battle, the wife marched into the shed and retrieved a larger shovel.
“What are you doing?” I asked her.
“I am going to relocate the hydrangea out of the front yard if it kills me!” she said and stormed off.
Thirty minutes later the wife came walking into the backyard dragging a withered hydrangea and her right leg.
“Whoa! What happened? It looks like the hydrangea kicked your butt!”
“For the record, I got it dug out, but I think I hurt my knee in the process,” she said. “I heard some strange popping noises, followed by a tearing sound, followed by crunching and grinding noises, followed by excruciating pain in my patella area. Honey? Honey? Great! He passed out.”
It turns out after multiple tests, X-rays, and MRIs, it was determined that the wife had torn her meniscus and would have to have surgery to, “clean up the knee.”
“Clean up the knee?” I said when she told me. “I’ve seen your knee. It looks pretty clean to me.”
“They are going to use arthroscopic surgery to go into the knee to trim and repair the meniscus, clean up the arthritis, remove spurs and bone chips, and Honey?…Honey…Great! He passed out again!
When it comes to all things painful and medical, I have a very low threshold for consciousness. I actually passed out many years ago when I took my nine-month-old son to the ER for stitches in his head. When I came to, he was laughing and playing with the nurses who rolled their eyes in my general direction.
For several weeks the wife hobbled around in excruciating pain as we waited for her surgery date to arrive.
“Dear,” I said to the wife, “I just hate to see you in so much pain, your every movement looks like you’re being stabbed in the knee by a thousand hydrangeas.”
“It absolutely feels like it,” she affirmed. “Knives, and ice picks, and hatchets, all carving up the inside of my knee. Could you please get me an ice pack? Honey? Honey? NOT AGAIN!”
“I’m still here. But that was a close one. I’ll get you an ice pack, STAT!”
Surgery day came and it couldn’t have gone better. The wife was rolled into surgery hurting and came out with next to no pain. It’s really pretty amazing how two little incisions into the front of the knee, with cameras, tools and instruments for cutting and grinding…Oh, dear…getting light headed…lights fading…I had better end this column right now. …
Raul Ascunce is a freelance columnist for the Sentinel-Tribune. He may be contacted at [email protected].
