Everything happens for a reason..

I honestly don’t understand how one could be sitting perfectly relaxed not doing anything at all (Wallah, who ever heard of someone getting injured doing nothing?!) – unless one counts “getting holy” as doing something – and then suddenly BAM. I still cringe remembering the disgusting popping sounds my knee made that night after it locked and refused to straighten. That’s happened plenty of times to my elbow and all I had to do was force it straight, it’d hurt a bit but after a few minutes it’d be back to normal again. Naturally I figured it’d be the same for my knee. I forced it straight and continued to pray but then the next time I went down and came back up it locked again. “What the hell?!” ok I figured I’ll have to straighten it again… I was very much convinced it’d go away after a while so I kept praying. It continued though and each time I got up it was the same thing, only problem was each time I forced it straight it made more noise and hurt more and more. I nearly cried out once, that’s how much it hurt. Of course that would be the time I had decided to leave my phone home and so I was feeling pretty worried. I got up a final time and this time it really felt like it’d be my last, my whole leg from the knee down was on fire. I decided to go home before the pain got worse and I couldn’t walk home at all. It was fine walking home. When I got home it seemed fine also. I sat and drank juice and figured maybe it passed whatever it was. It was kinda late by then and I went to go to bed. Out of curiosity I kneeled on the floor to see if whatever was wrong with my knee had in fact gone away. It didn’t hurt going down. I was pretty relieved thinking whatever it was really had just been a passing thing. When I went to get up I found out how wrong I was. My knee locked again and as I tried to stand up the pain that came from it was the worse thing I can ever remember feeling. I was fortunate to be right beside my bed cuz I fell over and fortunately it was onto it. The rest of that night I couldn’t move an inch – without moving the pain was so bad I had to bite my lip most of the night and got no sleep.

It was just my luck that the next day was Friday and none of the docs were open. That meant I had to wait till Saturday to go. Friday was pretty hellish. Just trying to get to the bathroom was a nightmare. Only my sister and I were home and I really was craving Fettuccini – which she has no clue how to make. So I made it while hopping around the kitchen on my good leg.

Saturday evening I went to an orthopedic doc in a hospital in Jumeira (Dubai). He took a look at it. He poked it once (or twice maybe) with his finger. Said it didn’t look that bad and I could come back for an MRI and sent me home with a bag full of drugs to get high on till then. Mother’s friend recommended an orthopedic specialist doc who she said was really good and she had been to him before. He scheduled me for an appointment the following Tuesday. Between Saturday and Tuesday I learnt how grateful one should be for the ability to walk (ha, one could learn lots at uni if they just stop and think a bit – especially when one has classes scattered all across campus!). By the end of my uni day Sunday I had learnt a new definition of pain. I had been offered the use of a wheelchair there but my pride wouldn’t allow it – not while I could still force myself to walk even if I was practically hopping..

Tuesday finally came, the doc was all the way in Jumeirah (a different doc) – I say “all the way” this time cuz my appointment was at 12, smack at the time of hideous traffic on Shaykh Zayed road. We managed to make it up there on time but were late due to the receptionist’s inability to give proper directions (“Every thing happens for a reason” ;) I got to see where lots of cool things were due to her fault.. like the Dubai ladies club =D). Anywayz, this doc used to have a practice in the states. He was pretty high class and did a thorough examination of my knee and asked a bunch of questions about it – he said he was building “history” about the knee. He x-rayed it (though nothing showed up on the x-ray cuz the injury is a soft tissue one.) prescribed physical therapy and some anti-inflammatory drugs and told me to rub this cream on it every night before sleeping and wrap it with a bandage. He said do that for 3 weeks AND stay away from tennis (T_T) during that time. After 3 weeks I’m supposed to go back for a check up. If it still hurts he’ll do an MRI and most likely operate on it (which would mean more time away from tennis T_T).

My knee still hurts a good deal (I guess I shouldn’t be surprised since I’ve been forgetting to take the pills) but the worse for me is not being able to go to tennis. I feel pretty badly about it but one thing keeps coming to mind, this post on an interesting blog I read whenever I have spare time on the net. It’s very true that everything happens for a reason. Sometimes one of the hardest things to do is to remember that. I guess this couldn’t have happened at a better time. It’s exam time and I really wanna do well this time around – not only just for the satisfaction of having good grades but if I don’t get good grades I can’t change my major at the end of this semester. I was feeling deep fear over the two exams I had this Thursday that just passed (a week after I hurt my knee) I had been studying the whole week and even managed to seriously cut down my net time (a feat I thought impossible). I usually have tennis on Wednesdays and the coach doesn’t like to let me off for studying (though she lets the others off!) and if it weren’t for my knee she would have had me out there playing tennis taking up precious study time. Thanx to my knee I got a lot of studying done that Wednesday. “Everything happens for a reason” It makes me feel a bit better about missing out on tennis when I think that at least I got to devote my full attention to studying…