Told ya.

I've been saying it since July of 2010.

The knee isn't right. Still hurts.
Still isn't stable. Still hurts. Still isn't stable. I may have mentioned that it hurts. Grinds. Pops. Hurts.

I said it to medical professionals. I said it to my family. I said it to my friends. I wrote about it on my blog.

When I said it to the doctor who performed the surgery in the first place, he explained to me that I'm fat. And that I have arthritis. (a word here about arthritis... you can translate that into 'ordinary wear and tear' and assume that a huge portion of the population has some degree of it.)

I tried.
I did.
I said, "I know I am overweight.
I know that I have arthritis. But this isn't that."

By the time I got to the third or fourth word, his eyes had glazed over. I could hear him thinking. I've stopped listening, why haven't you stopped talking? You're fine. I did a great job. Go away.

By the way, he did that same thing with regards to the tear in the meniscus of my right knee and I ended up getting another surgeon to fix it.

In the deposition I read, Dr. Slice and Dice said that the tear 'was not obvious' to him.

It sure as hell was to me.

I told Dr. Pain that it still hurt. He was sympathetic but sort of shrugged. He couldn't overrule an orthopedic surgeon, after all.

I talked and talked and talked.
And then I was written off.

On September 13th this year, as I was reaching for something under a table, a bigger kid walked by and tripped over my extended-behind-me-for-balance left foot, which twisted my knee and added another layer of pain to the pain that's been constantly there since the surgery.

I'm glad to have had an adult witness, unrelated to me.

Because the man in the smeg colored suit! And his thundering herd of Ass Clowns!!

I waited a week before seeking medical attention although I filed an incident/accident report right away.

Knees are.. weird.
And sometimes they heal up just fine.
Didn't happen.

Went to Urgent Care to have it checked. They had me come back once a week for three weeks. I finally balked the third week when the nurselike person suggested I change into my shorts (again) so the doctor could see my knee (again).

"No. I need to go to an orthopedic doctor and find out what's going on. There is nothing this doctor can do for me at this point except prescribe pain medication."

So the doctor came in, we chatted, I told him who I wanted to see.
I had received recommendations from a few people about a particular doctor, and the appointment was made for me.

I saw him in mid-October. He spent about two minutes with me, I was xrayed, he spent another three minutes with me telling me the xray showed zero cartilage left in my knee, told me I needed an MRI, have a nice day, schedule a follow up with the front desk, see ya later, bye bye.

Had the MRI.
And Monday of this last week, I saw the doctor again.

There is no cartilage in my left knee. It's all bone on bone. And the ACL repair? The thing I went through that caused me more agony than anything else I've ever had done to me, including the rotator cuff repair and bicep reattachment that's supposed to be 'the worst'?

The ACL graft didn't take.

I have been walking around on a torn ACL for four years. It's not a wonder there is no cartilage left in my knee. It's not a wonder it hasn't stopped hurting for all that time, not a wonder it still wakes me up at night.

Where do we go from here?

Well, I have been in contact with my attorney.
This certainly isn't over.

I won't be writing too much about the legal aspects as we begin another round of the shit on the injured worker game.

We've already learned that the gang of sharks weren't averse to trying to get me fired from my job by using my blog. I'm sure they haven't changed. And if they're not already reading it again, they will be soon.

So wish me luck. I could use some.