If you have been reading some of my recent posts, you are probably aware that I have been talking about some of my exploits and experiences after being assigned to the Joint Interoperability Test Center (JITC) at Fort Huachuca, Arizona. My story today centers around a subject that virtually every professional athlete and avid amateur runner dreads. That is the subject of constantly painful, swollen knee joints. Sure, you can go to an orthopedic doctor, and that doctor may prescribe you with a non-steroid anti-inflammatory drug (NSAID) such as Motrin or Indomethacin. However, when the problem becomes severe enough, the orthopedic doctor may advise you to get x-rays. Those x-rays don’t always tell the whole story, though. Thus, the doctor may order magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) of the knee joints to get a better look. If you recall, my family once took a trip to Fort Bliss, Texas in my Tempo from Hell. Why on earth would I leave a garden spot in the middle of the desert like Fort Huachuca, Arizona, and travel to a hellhole at the western edge of Texas called Fort Bliss. Let me tell you, there ain’t a damn thing blissful about Fort Bliss. Nope. Nada. Zilch. Fort Bliss is, damn near the eastern edge of White Sands missile Range, New Mexico. Now, the name of that place says it all. Well, that almost says it all. The sand ain’t really white. But there is one helluva lot of sand. There is nothing but miles and miles and miles of sand. If you had some big ass dune buggies and Tonka trucks, you could go out and play in the sand. Oh. You need to make sure that you bring your shovels and your buckets. That way you can build sand castles in the sand. Make sure to pack plenty of water and snake detector kits. Cuz I am pretty damn sure that you’re going to run into a few of those critters out there. Yeah. Snakes and scorpions. Those bastard’s love to play in the sand. Slithering and crawling around just waiting to bite your ass. Well, they may not bite your ass, especially if you don’t wipe good. You know. It may smell a little bit, so they may choose to bite you in the leg or the foot instead. Yeah. And I know I said bite, but scorpions don’t technically bite. Yeah. They sting. But it’s all the same, bite or sting. You are still going to get injected with some venomous shit. That’s why I said that you need to bring along your snake detector kits. What in the hell is a snake detector kit, you ask? It’s that noisy ass dog that barks incessantly that won’t shut up. You know. The one your neighbor has. You’ve got at least one neighbor, possibly two or three, that have dogs like that. But let me tell you, those dogs are great, GR-8, at detecting snakes. They will stand in one spot and bark to high heaven until someone comes to see why in the hell that damn dog is barking. Just be careful so that you don’t get bitten by Jake. Who is Jake? Come on now. We’ve been over this before. Jake is the snake. Get it, got it, good. But I digress. Where was I. Oh yes. Sorry ass Fort Bliss. The only difference between Fort Bliss and White Sands is that at Fort Bliss, there is less sand and more rocks. Swell. Just swell. Anyway, I painfully, both literally and figuratively, drove to Fort Bliss with my family, in the Tempo from hell to get MRIs on both of my knees, because that was the closest ARMY base with an MRI machine at the time. Two weeks later, when I had the appointment with my orthopedic doctor to go over the MRI reports, he informed me that I needed arthroscopic surgery on both knees. I suspected that I might need surgery because I had suffered ligament damage in both knees over the years. The plan was to repair one knee at a time using arthroscopic surgery. The orthopedic surgeon scheduled me for surgery on my right knee first with one month for convalescent leave. I thought the one month of convalescent leave was rather generous but I wasn’t complaining. However, my supervisor out at JITC sure as hell complained a lot. In fact, he couldn’t understand why in the hell I needed a whole month off for convalescent leave. I merely told him that he needed to speak with the orthopedic surgeon and the powers that be at the hospital. After all, I didn’t write the convalescent leave order, but I gladly accepted it. But here’s the funny thing. One evening very close to the end of my first convalescent leave period, I took my family to the local Golden Corral for their dinner buffet meal. I hobbled into the restaurant on crutches with a full leg brace on my right leg and sat down. My wife took care of paying for the meals, and then she prepared a plate for me while she was getting up late for our son, the master of disaster. While she went back to get a plate for herself, a middle-aged guy dressed sort of like a hillbilly walked over to my table. I didn’t recognize him for a minute, because he was dressed in bib overalls and wore a toupee on his head to hide the fact that he was bald. To be totally honest, the toupee looked like a mop sitting on top of his head. He was not pulling off the hillbilly routine at all. Cuz he was missing the corncob pipe or the piece of straw sticking out of his mouth. Additionally, he wore tennis sneakers instead of farmer’s boots. What in the hell was up with that? Anyway, the hillbilly turned out to be my supervisor. He asked when I was coming back to work. I told him I wasn’t. He looked at me with this funny look on his face and said, “What?” I replied, “That’s right. As soon as my convalescent leave ends, I am scheduled to have surgery on my other knee. Then, I’ll be out for another thirty days. Human resources has all the details. Oh, he was not a happy camper, but I was doing just fine and I suffered no exercises in futility.
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