If at first you don't succeed

I had high hopes on January 27 when I went in for my new knee. Pain free days, comfortable nights – it all sounded great and it was all to be mine.

Here we are 9.5 months later and my hopes are highly diminished – is that an oxymoron?

Tomorrow morning I go back to my surgeon so he can have a look-see and perhaps figure out why I’m still in so much pain and why there’s still so much swelling. It’s called arthroscopic surgery; that really just means an inspection. You see, he doesn’t know what the hell’s going on, so he thought he’d get a better look.

Does this all sound slightly mad to you?

Yeah, to me too.

I mean, the guy put me on an operating table, sawed away at my leg for a few hours, caused me nine-and-a-half months of pain and now I’m inviting him back in?

What the hell’s wrong with me?

As I’m fond of reminding myself, we do call it practicing medicine.

Why can’t they practice on someone else?