Not Just Knee Deep

Sunday March 7th, 2010 - Cranberry, PA/Kenosha, WI

Pain. Non stop pain. Excruciating non stop pain. Overwhelmingly excruciating non stop pain. That’s what I felt for the better part of my 666.6 mile drive home from Pennsylvania today. I’m not making that total up either. That’s exactly what the trip mileage ended up.

There is something really wrong with my left knee, and I have NO idea what it is. It was sore yesterday when I woke up, and it got worse as the day went on. It affected my show a little last night, but I was still able to pull it off. The audience didn’t know, but I sure did.

I’m having a hard time lifting my leg in any way, and that’s a pretty major deal. None of us ever have a need to lift our legs in this earthly experience, do we? I figured I could just slide through life and not be bothered. I guess I was wrong. I need to have this looked at.

I wanted to take a shower before going to bed last night, but I couldn’t lift my leg to get in. The pain was that bad. Then, I got up this morning at 5am to start driving and I had an adventure even getting out of bed. Every inch of movement in almost every direction was pure torture, and it would’ve made a hell of a funny scene in some movie if it wasn’t me.

I could barely walk on it, but I managed to limp slowly to my car. Getting in the car was another adventure, and that must have taken twenty minutes. I felt like Tim Conway’s old man character on The Carol Burnet show, but for real. I knew I was in for a painful drive.

The first 50 miles was hell on earth. No matter where I tried to rest the leg, it hurt and it was a constant throbbing I couldn’t ignore. I couldn’t find a position to just let it rest so it was a matter of trying to move it to relive pain over and over again. I knew I couldn’t last doing that all the way home so I stopped and got some Advil as soon as I could find one.

Again it took about twenty minutes to get out of the car, limp to the gas station, pay for the Advil, limp back, get back in the car and start driving. I’m about as impatient of a guy as has ever lived, so this was excruciating on many levels, but what could I do? Nothing.

Kristie Dickinson lives in Lansing, MI and she’s a sweetie. She’s an aspiring comic but used to be a dancer. No, not that kind, a real one. No poles involved. She also bakes some of THE best cookies and brownies I’ve ever tasted. We were scheduled to get together for lunch since I don’t see her very often, and I really wanted to cancel but I went anyway.

We had lunch at P.F. Chang’s and it was great to see her but I thought my leg was going to fall off the whole time I sat there on a high bar type chair. I couldn’t find a comfortable position to sit no matter how hard I tried and it was a total waste of both a great restaurant and great company too. I limped to my car slowly and almost fell down in the parking lot.

The pain is right dead center in the knee, right under the kneecap. I made it to Kenosha, WI to do the Mothership Connection radio show on WLIP but that was torture as well, as all I could think of was the pain. I got a motel room and hope it will feel better tomorrow.