The right knee saga

This is probably not of much interest to anyone except people who know me in real life, but here it is for anyone who is interested – it’s just a more convenient way of getting information out than sending numerous duplicate emails.

In July last year my knee felt sore after a run. Gave it a couple of days rest and it seemed OK. On the next run, the pain came back – this time it didn’t go away with rest. Off to a physio for treatment. It improved somewhat. It was close enough to 100% by City to Surf day to think it might get through the run, and it looked like doing so for a while. At the bottom of the big hill I was on track for a PB. At the top of the hill though the knee was no good. I was a walking (limping) spectator for most of the 2nd half of the race, the ultimate frustration. While officially I “finished” (a long time after I’d hoped), I didn’t “run” the event really. After another couple of months of only ever partial recovery, it was time to see a GP, who sent me to a “sports physician” who ordered a MRI scan then sent me to a surgeon. All of this took a maddening amount of time.

On November 22, by which time I’d intended to have had it fully cured, I finally went to to a nearby hospital and had an arthroscopy to repair a tear in my right medial meniscus (the bit of cartilage on the inside of the knee joint between the 2 leg bones). The surgeon declared it a success (a raging success in fact, a complete repair with minimal loss of the all-important cushioning cartilage) but warned there would be some recovery time, that I should not walk long distances at first and should not run for 2 months. A big thanks must go to my Dad who came to visit and assisted me in the first stage of recovery so I didn’t have to do much.

A few more physio treatments, as recommended by the surgeon. The post-surgical stiffness and soreness in other parts of my knee joint slowly fades away. But the pain in the original spot on the inside of the joint returns, or remains – perhaps masked at first by a lack of activity and by anti-inflammatory medicine. Hello, the 2 months are up, I should be running, what are you still doing there, knee pain? Physio suspects some persistent inflammation from the operation or original injury. Voltarin helps it, and enables me to walk further, as well as work a bit on a cross-trainer I have at home – like a stationary bike but with no seat, lower impact to the joint than walking or running. But the Voltarin doesn’t cure it. A visit to a GP for something stronger to smash it on the head. He gives me Mobic. That helps too, but no more really than the Voltarin. Meanwhile the physio throws all manner of strength tests at my knee and declares it pretty robust, completely recovered from surgery. He says I can start jogging a bit. I start doing slow 100 metre jogs with rests in between. It seems not to aggravate it too much but the cause of the pain is clearly still not cured. Then the Mobic runs out. Over a few days the pain becomes worse than before the operation. Now even walking half a km aggravates it. Next visit to the physio, he recommends contacting the surgeon, and obviously discontinuing any running. I have an appointment for March 2nd, but bring it forward to last week. Surgeon is surprised I still have pain considering the awesome job he allegedly did. I need another scan. More maddening time to wait to see what’s going on. The scan will be next Friday. Then another appointment with the surgeon the week after that. If I have a stress injury, like possibly a stress fracture, it will eventually come good but will just take a lot more time. Not good. The half marathon in May is already all but abandoned. Now even this year’s City to Surf (August) might be under threat. Unthinkable. The amount of time not running has seriously done my head in. If you don’t get the kind of buzz I do from these events and don’t have the motivation for them that I do, you won’t understand, but never mind. If there is no stress injury, I’ll get an injection of cortisone. That, unlike a tablet which is diluted throughout the entire body, really should smash any remaining inflammation on the head.

In the week since I saw the surgeon, I’ve stayed off not just the running, but the cross trainer and walking any further than necessary as well. The pain has reduced dramatically (which I have no doubt is due to my reduced activity), but there is a residual “something’s not quite right” feeling that has been there for more than 6 months now. And this reduced activity is doing absolutely nothing for my general fitness which I need to be as good as possible when I do eventually start running again. Nothing worse than starting from a “total unfitness” base.

There is another aspect to this whole thing. On occasions I have received prayer for healing of this problem. It has been just as effective as all the medical treatment I’ve been getting, as in not very. An example of the kind of thing mentioned in my previous post in that so far the God I pray to has chosen not to answer in the affirmative, either by providing the kind of treatment that works, or by otherwise intervening in ways that some parts of recorded history indicate that he can. Another prompt to ponder the age old conundrum of an all-good, all-loving and all-powerful God in the world in which some things are not as they should be. As I’ve said – more coming on this topic later. The topics of this post and the previous are just 2 things, by no means the worst, that have caused me to ponder it. My problem of course pales into insignificance compared to those of many others, it just happens to be my current personal experience of the world/universe/life being utterly not as it should be.

I hope that I will soon get a complete cure. In the meantime I still can’t run. Therefore I can’t maintain anywhere near the level of fitness I would like, nor put in the training required to run well in future races. I also can’t continue learning hang gliding, which requires running (see some earlier posts). I can’t even take off significant weight to enable me to run faster when I can run and to make learning hang gliding easier (this is despite regularly starving myself lately and depriving myself of many good things – I have a remarkably efficient, metabolism-slowing, energy-conserving body). Therefore, I am not happy (about this part of my life). I hope I can report something better soon, but it is anything but a “sure and certain hope”. I do have something like that kind of hope about other things though, which is good.

Shaken up in Christchurch – and Sydney

Have you ever seen something really bad happening at a distance – I mean something world’s-attention-grabbing-bad – and known that you have close family or friends right there in it? I can say now that you probably don’t know what that’s like until it’s happened.

Last Tuesday at work an alert pops up on the computer screen. Almost instant information about a seismic event somewhere, direct from the computers at the various geological analysis centres around the world. We need this because earthquakes cause tsunamis, and part of the service we provide is tsunami warnings. We all spring into action, though probably 99% of these are either test messages or statements that there is no threat to Australia and turn out to be just an annoying interruption to the flow of work we’ve already got. In the rare cases that it could be a real threat, priorities are immediately rearranged to deal with it. Nevertheless depending on the format of the message, often we have to send a message back to the source regardless, acknowledging we’ve received it. The basic information is there. Magnitude 6.3. Latitude and longitude coordinates. For ease of interpretation, the general area is added: “South Island New Zealand”. I’m a bit new to the job I’m doing so I quickly but nonchalantly look up the written procedures for what to do about it. Already it’s been assessed as a “No threat to Australia”, probably because of the land location as well as the magnitude and distance from us. Just while I’m looking around, my mobile phone shakes. After a few minutes establishing what action is needed, I look at the message from my brother. “Just had call from Mum. Has been earthquake in Christchurch where they are but they are ok. Hotel is damaged so not sure what will happen with accommodation.” It’s the first time it’s crossed my mind in those few minutes that Mum and Dad are indeed touring New Zealand. I knew it, but I admit I didn’t have the itinerary memorised in my head. I am suddenly a lot more interested in this event.

Acknowledgment of technical message happens in a timely manner, and then soon it’s lunch time. The TV is on in the lunch room. All the TV stations have gone to Christchurch. Dust. Debris. Chaos. Piles of bricks and concrete where buildings were. Serious looking and sounding live reporters – some, as it turns out, from the very Canterbury TV organisation which now has a collapsed main office building with numerous employees inside. Dazed and confused people wandering about, some covered in dust, some with blood as well. They are there, somewhere. “Just where?” I start wondering. Nice to know they are “OK” – for the moment. But I hope they get out of there reasonably soon. All sorts of thoughts come to mind. Aftershocks. They might bring down buildings on the edge of collapse from the first shake. Sharp debris. Burst water pipes. Flash floods. Broken gas pipes. Fires and explosions. No fresh water. No sewerage. And, as the message said, presumably no accommodation. I see someone about the age, size, shape and hair colour of my mother, between 2 strong sturdy guys in fluro yellow jackets, using their strong shoulders for support, and being assisted away from a collapsed building (I haven’t told her that yet). Behind the dark glasses, and with the brief nature of the shot, I can’t tell either way. After a considerable time watching the drama unfold, it’s back to work time. I’m now in a different world from the rest of those around me. Certainly from one of the managers who wants to talk to me later and is disproportionately concerned about relatively trivial matters like my knowledge of obscure new procedures to do with monitoring of rainfall rates from automatic rain gauges, which apparently didn’t go quite as planned over the weekend when I was on duty. It occurs to me no-one actually knows what sort of a day I’m having, because they are not where I am, even though most of them now know about this situation. I’m pretty distracted for the rest of the day but manage to get through the rest of the work.

At the end of the day, just before leaving, I get through to Mum. They were in separate places doing different things when it happened, but the phones still worked and they found each other. They are still safe. They’ve been to an evacuation centre, but have now found a very nice guy who offers to give them a bed and a roof for the night. I’d like to know how well built his house is, but for the moment I have to live with some uncertainty about that. They sound confident though, so I’m happy about that. Their phone battery is almost dead but they have time to tell me I probably know a lot more about it than they do, with my access to TV, internet etc. It doesn’t occur to me to quickly tell them what I do know. Death toll 65 and counting. Prime Minister says “New Zealand’s darkest day”. Maybe they don’t need to know that yet.

As planned I go to a work function at a restaurant to farewell a very good work colleague who is leaving us. Conversation is buzzing. I tell people about Mum and Dad in Christchurch, then many other topics inevitably come along. I get into a stimulating and motivating conversation with some co-workers and one of the managers about ideas going around about how to improve the way we work and provide our services. For a while it’s a normal day again. Then the dinner ends and I say goodbye to everyone and start heading home. Now I’m in my own thoughts again, and they return across the Tasman Sea and to hoping and praying that Mum and Dad have a good, safe night. They plan to pick up a hire car the next day and get out of the town. I’ll be happy when they are out of there. I’ve been shaken up too. The dominant thought is my being a long way away and not able to see or hear what’s going on or do anything to help. From this point on, I have a bit more of an understanding of what it was like to know someone close who was booked on Pan Am flight 103, or to know someone who worked at the World Trade Center in  New York in September 2001 while watching live pictures of two of the world’s most impressive buildings self-demolish from the top down in a matter of seconds, or to know someone who was in Mumbai running from men with guns shooting at everyone they saw, or to have family in the direct path of Cyclone Yasi (like someone at work did), or in Cairo at any time in the last few weeks. This wasn’t as dramatic as some of those things but I suspect the associated helplessness is the same. Despite the apparent danger I wanted to be there, to know what was happening, to talk to Mum and Dad, and to see what I could do to help.

Now a few days have passed, and so has the danger. They are well away from Christchurch and looking at other parts of the country. A sobering thought has stayed with me. In such events, the destruction is random and unpredictable. If you are in it, whether you survive or not is a pure lottery. It depends on exactly where you are – inside or out, in a building that survived or one that collapsed. I find myself thanking God that my mother and father are still safe and well. I especially thank him that Mum decided to have lunch later instead of earlier and went inside a building just before the shaking stated, given that on exiting the building, which didn’t collapse, the smashed remains of the fallen facade could be seen all over the outdoor chairs and tables at the nearby coffee shop where lunch was to be had. On such random decisions major consequences can hang. It is a good thing that they are alive and I try to make a habit of thanking the God from whom all good things come, for every good thing he gives. But this time I have an unease about this thanks in light of that obvious lottery nature of people’s fortunes on that day, which is of course the question of what the family and friends of the dead will be thinking. For what will they be thankful? At this moment there are people I know who know people in the earthquake zone they have not heard from. For those who are confirmed dead, what was God doing for them, especially the ones who trust him? A trite answer would be “taking them to heaven/a better life/a better place” but from my earthly perspective death is still not in any sense good, so that answer’s a fail for me I’m afraid. Were they less “deserving” of being safely preserved? Luke 13:1-4, it would seem, says an emphatic “no”. What was the God who has plans to prosper people and who works  for the good of those who love him doing when they lost their friends and family members? For me, at present, the evidence before me in events like those in Christchurch speaks against these verses. If you are already typing a comment about death and destruction being inevitable in the world anyway, no doubt with well-worn cliches about a “fallen world”, or even about there being people even worse off still, then you have already missed the point.  Yes these are obvious facts – the point I make can be summed up as “why are some things the way they are, if God is all-good, all-loving and all-powerful?” This is an old, old question, and one which I find myself thinking about often. Maybe I’ve missed the point of what is “for the good of those who love him”. But “good” and “suffering” are words I am not in the habit of calling synonyms. Do I just have a difference of opinion with God on this matter? There is more to say about this, and I’ve been thinking of writing more about it here at a not-too-distant-future time. So for the time being I thank God for every good thing, but the evidence all around me in the real world convinces me I should not have any confidence that things which are as they should be, will remain so at any given time in the future, even if I ask God to arrange for it to be so. He seems to want us to ask for good things, but when I do, in my experience he often just says “no”. So why should I continue to trust him, as I actually do? Well, the good news is I actually think there are, paradoxically, good reasons to do so despite all the above. But that is for another time. Here ends this rambling post.

WordPress – a new home

OK, I’ve just been catapulted into a brave new world, having been shoved over here by the seemingly now defunct Windows Live Spaces site. It’s pretty good though, since I basically came across that other site by accident and this seems more like a real blog site. I’m still finding my way around, trying out different looks etc, so the look might change frequently in the next little while. Not sure that I like this look particularly, but time will tell if I can be bothered changing it. Not sure why the spacing between lines is bigger now, but I can’t say I care about it enough to bother investigating. Not yet anyway.