(28 March 2000)
Somebody Expects the Spanish Inquisition!
I had my Examination for Discovery on Friday 18 February. It was pretty interesting: I showed up with my lawyer, and ICBC's lawyer showed up with my adjustor at a court reporting service downtown. We settle in and I get questioned. For almost three hours. Then, that afternoon, my lawyer got to grill the woman who ran over me. I was completely exhausted after this experience - I had been getting more and more tense over it before the fact.
There is more I could put here about the Examination, but I wonıt since I am not sure who is reading this. Basically, after this one of three things will happen: negotiation, mediation, or a trial. Negotiation is when two lawyers get together and hammer out a deal. Mediation is when a third lawyer intercedes between two lawyers who havenıt been able to make a deal, and tries to make a deal with them. Apparently itıs quite unlikely that this case will go all the way to a trial, but weıll see.
Leg gets better slowly but is still weak. Physio is over with at the end of this month, try for some regular exercise after this. My knee gives me a lot of trouble because of the unequal loads thrown on it and the scar tissue inside it, and the rest of my body is out of balance too. My lawyer, ICBC's lawyer and the adjustor all wanted me to see another surgeon for a second opinion and possible prognosis. They unanimously agreed on one, which worries me a bit about the guy who has been cutting me until now.
I went to see my surgeon yesterday for an X-ray and exam, first time in three months. The bone continues to heal but it is healing crookedly, so I have a lump the size of a mango on my leg that I might have for the rest of my life. I go back in three months to see when the metal rod could be taken out - perhaps later this year if this are going well, but certainly by next summer. After that we will consider possibly taking a slice out of the top of my shinbone in order to bring my leg back into alignment. Iıd like to see what the second surgeon has to say on this.
29 June 2000
Well, That Was Frickin Anticlimactic...
News is that in the first week of June, I quit using the cane. I figured six months on The Stick were enough and forced myself off it. I think my leg is getting steadily stronger though my knee is killing me, keeps wobbling on me, and I lurch around as if Iıve had four drinks at lunch, which in turn throws my hip, back and neck out, giving me a lot of headaches.
Also, in the last two weeks I saw both my regular surgeon and this other orthopedic surgeon that both ICBCıs and my lawyer told me to see. I saw the regular surgeon first: an X-ray is taken, he looks at it, nods sagely and says, well, itıs crooked, and yes, itıs shorter, and too soon to tell about the rest of it. The tire iron in my leg is coming out in mid-September some time (July is too soon, and the operating theatres are closed for most of August), and itıs odds-on that I will need that shinbone-slicing operation mentioned below, sometime in January or February.
Ten days later I go to see the other surgeon. After a four-month wait for the appointment, he spends about 30 minutes with me so he can write a report for ICBC. He looks at all my X-rays since Day One (Iıd forgotten how thoroughly smashed it was), nods sagely and says, well, itıs crooked, and yes, itıs shorter, and too soon to tell about the rest of it. Oh, and maybe you will need a lift in your left shoe. And that was about it.
I wonder sometimes if other people arenıt being a bit blase about what happened to me. Both these surgeons have seen hundreds of cases like this, and the lawyers have too, and while this accident was quite severe, it is relatively straightforward and clear-cut, and so is not likely to stand out in anyoneıs mental landscape. Except mine. But how would you expect other people to act, anyway? (See, I can be realistic about it too.)
In other news, my Algeria game is finished, and will probably come out later this year or early 2001. Also, I made my "Battle of Seattle" mini-game available for free download off the "Little Wars" page. I think several hundred people at least saw it, if they didnıt also download it. I also found out by accident that my short article on the Bonus Army of 1932 was being used as a supplemental reading for an American History course at the University of Massachusetts! I suppose that makes me some kind of academic by association. Perhaps this also explains why that article normally scores the largest amount of hits each day on the page. It's also just the right length and detail for a term paper, so I have undoubtedly furthered the decline of American post-secondary education through aiding and abetting any number of plagiarist little buggers.
(17 September 2000)
A Matched Pair!
On the afternoon of Friday 8 September, I had yet another operation to take the metal rod out of my leg, since it's no longer really needed and if I had some kind of accident with it in, it would be a Bad Thing (imagine trying to get an irregularly bent metal rod out of my leg, or picking out the bits of sheared-off screws). This time they didn't give me morphine, so no post-op nausea and vomiting, and I came out of the anaesthetic pretty quickly - the nurse commented on it, and I told her this was as lucid as I ever get! They kicked me out of the hospital early the next morning (like 0700), and I spent the following week at home recuperating. I have what looks like 30 staples in several long and short incisions in my leg, and am having them taken out tomorrow. Moving around will be easier then. When things settle down we will be able to tell if this is helping with my knee problems at all.
Yech... the rod had been in my leg for over a year, so bone gristle and marrow had started growing into it from either end. When they gave me the rod and screws, they just gave it to me in a plastic bag and didn't clean it out first. So I thought I would have had to bury it in the garden and let the beetles and ants clean it out for me, but it actually cleaned out quickly with a lobster pick and and an unbent coathanger wire. I buried the bits in the compost - well, what else was I going to do with them?
So now I have an almost-matched pair of metal rods (the second one is a bit thicker and longer than the other). I think I will ask Gary to make a walking-man sculpture out of them, with the rods to serve for absurdly elongated and stiff legs moving on cams, but in the short term I think I will make a set of wind chimes. I can also get a nice flute note by covering up all the holes etc. and whistling into the small end! What do you think I should do?
One more operation after this is likely - perhaps in February or March of 2001 they will do another one to straighten out the tibia itself. That one will be quite a bit more involved than this operation, which was pretty straightforward. And that should be it - there's not much more they can do than that, short of giving me a new knee in a few years when the unequal load on this one makes it blow out.