The Strange Journey Begins
At 43 years old, I decided it was time to check off a few To-Do's. I started with a New Year's resolution to run the Half Marathon. I started training in January 2010. My foot and left knee started hurting in February. I went to the Podiatrist who gave me orthotics to sort out my foot problem. It worked!
My knee however, got worse. I took out my left orthotic to see if that was the problem. I ran for about a month that way. It did not get better, it hurt more than before. Back to the Podiatrist. He was very unhappy about my running with one orthotic, and thought I may have messed my knee up from doing it. He gave me new, athletic orthotics. I left swearing that I would use them both all the time. Weeks later, my knee still hurt. I went back. During the course of the exam, I asked him if it was possible I was barking up the wrong tree with a podiatrist about my knee. He said his shingle says he fixes feet, not knees.
Point taken, I went to a Sports Medicine doctor, who immediately diagnosed ITB. This is a tightening of the outer thigh muscle band, that can 'pull' on your knee. I was sent home with exercises and an appointment to come back in a few weeks. No better after two weeks, I went back and got more exercises and a roller to loosen my outer thigh muscle.
Now June, this Wedding/Event planner and Floral Designer, was in pain AND in wedding and social season. I stopped running. I also stopped going to the doctor. I had no time to go and it wasn't working anyway.
One early Monday morning in September, after a particularly busy weekend of events, I woke up unable to put weight on my left knee. I made an appointment.
My new diagnosis was a stress fracture of my lower tibia, I was sent for x-rays. No stress fracture showed on the films, but I was put on crutches to relieve the pain and weight on my left leg. After two weeks, my knee hurt more than ever, and kept me awake with pain. My doctor ordered an MRI of my shin.
After three and a half hours in the MRI machine, it occurred to me that they were not looking at a stress fracture on their screens in their windowed booth. I saw my doctor that afternoon and was shown the MRI - to me it looked like the state of South Carolina was on the top/front of my calf bone, just under my knee. To my untrained eye, this looked bad.
A bone scan (good times-NOT), gave a little more information, although not to me. We were told we needed an Orthopedic Oncologist (OO). After speaking with some good friends of the family that are also fantastic physicians, we made two appointments. I say two appointments for an OO, because one is 4 hours away, the other is 6 hours away. We saw the four-hour-away-doctor first. To say the very least, we passed on Dr. Cranky-Pants.
The next closest is at Sloan Kettering in NYC (6 hours away). Off we went. To say that our experience at MSK (Memorial Sloan Kettering) was the opposite of our first experience with Cranky Pants at Bummer Institute, would be a vast understatement. We met Dr. Healey who is clearly "The Man" in OO. He spent lots of time with us, explained the possibilities, and admitted me to the hospital.
The next day, he and his team of very qualified, smart, and VERY handsome residents (just sayin') removed a chunk of bone/tumor from my leg under general anesthesia. While I was still under, they ran the sample to the lab and awaited a diagnosis. If it was benign, they would 'scoop out' all of the offending mass and close me up.
It was malignant. They sewed me up without further scooping and sent me to recovery.
When I woke in recovery, Dr. Healey and my husband were there. Dr. Healey gave us both the news that the pain in my knee was Osteosarcoma.
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