Category: Health

A couple of weeks ago, I noticed something on my back as I was toweling off after getting out of the shower. It looked like a piece of tar or something. I reached back and scratched it and it immediately started bleeding – not a good sign I figured, so I made an appointment with my dermatologist.

When I described the problem to him, he said it’s probably nothing and sure enough he took one quick look at it and said “that’s a seborrheic keratosis – nothing to worry about”. He then pointed to a bunch of other marks on my chest and back, which I had also noticed once I started taking inventory after seeing the thing on my back, and said they were nothing to worry about either, just a sign of aging.

However, he then pointed to this thing on my upper lip near my nose and said “how long have you had this little white spot?” I told him it had been there a long while and I never really thought much of it. The doc said “well the thing on your back isn’t a problem, but I’m pretty sure this is”. He then decided to take a close look at the rest of me.

He then found what I thought was just a itchy dry spot that I often scratched on the back of my leg and asked how long that had been there. I had to admit that it had been there a while too, at least a couple of years. He decided to do a biopsy on both the leg and the lip thing. The doc was reasonably sure that the lip thing was a basal cell carcinoma but thought the leg thing would turn out to be OK.

Turns out he as only half right – the wrong half. The thing on the lip was cancer and the thing on the leg wasn’t alright. It was a cancer growth too, albeit a different kind, a squamous cell carcinoma. The good news is that neither of them are melanoma and neither of them metastasize very often.

I’m scheduled to have surgery to remove both them in a couple of weeks. It will be done in the dermatologist office with a local anesthesia and I should be fine afterward.

The only thing I need to do is reduce my exposure to the sun. Of course, considering that I usually golf 5-6 times a week that will be somewhat of a problem. The doctor says there are three preventative measures, with declining efficiency, that I need to decided among:

1. Avoid the sun altogether, particularly between the hours of 10am-4pm.
2. Wear pants and long sleeves when out in the sun.
3. Use sunblock.

He also said I should definitely wear a wide brim hat whenever I’m out in the sun.

I’m going to start by cutting back on my golf but I haven’t decided how much yet. One thing that I know is that I’m going to do is continue to play in my men’s league which is Wed nights after 4PM. After that, we’ll just see.

Home from surgery and resting. Everything went well. I walked out of the clinic without a problem. Here are some photos tsken off of the arthoscopic camera as it paraded around inside my knee.

Right in the middle of this shot, you can see some of the fraying cartilege.

Here is clearly a frayed loose piece of cartilege floating around getting in the way of normal knee movement.

In this shot, you can see the tool on the right which has just gone in and zapped, chopped, pureed, or something the loose cartilege piece and sucked it up.

On the right center of this shot you can see how the cartilege has been noticeably worn away.

Here’s all sorts of crap floating around in the knee (I believe the bubbles are actually generated by the tool doing its job, they aren’t typically there).

In this last shot, the tool in the lower right corner has just finished snipping away at the cartilege between 5 and 6 on the clock dial. The thing looks like PacMan the way that it snips away at the cartilege. I think the idea is to create a cleaner non frayed edge to the cartilege.

The doctor actually gave me a 15 minute cd video of the operation as seen through the camera that these still were taken from. It’s quite fascinating to watch. If Gary has enough room to host a 0.5 GB file, I’ll send him a copy and we’ll upload it for all to watch. It sure beats the simple old xray that I got the last time I had my knee operated on 40 years ago.

I feel really good. The pain is quite minimal, probably less than what I have been normally experiencing. I’ve got a bunch of Vicodin tablets that he prescribed for any pain but I currently don’t see any need to take them. There’s a Spikes baseball game tonight and I’m really tempted to go, I feel so well. The doc said I was cleared to go to the game tomorrow but I didn’t even think to ask him about tonight. He did say to take it easy today but I’m figuring sitting in a seat at a baseball game can’t be all that much of a strain. The game isn’t until 7:00 so I have a while before I have to decide.

Had my MRI on my knee this week and it looks like I’ll be having knee surgery just as I had expected. The good news is that it will just be a scope job. It will be handled as outpatient surgery and should be minor enough that I won’t even need crutches. Recovery should be short enough that I’ll only miss a week to 10 days of golf.

The bad news is that there were definite signs of arthritis in my knees. I think I’m actually going to have to get serious about losing some weight to take some strain off my knees. And Lisa, any suggestions on where I should go to learn more about arthritis? Thanks, in advance.

I’ll be having the surgery sometime in the next couple of weeks. I’ll find out exactly when on Monday and will let all know.

I’m probably starting to sound like a hypochondriac but once again my body is sending me messages. Right now it’s my knees that are bothering me.

Some of you may remember when I broke my left kneecap back in 1967. They wired my kneecap back together and I had to stay in a cast for about 7-8 weeks but things healed up fairly well – or so I thought. They certainly healed up well enough for Uncle Sam to draft my ass – but that’s another story for another time.

One residual effect of the injury though was that I always had problems with my left knee becoming painful if I had to sit in one position for an extended period usually a couple of hours. Because of that, whenever I would go to the movies I would always seek out an aisle seat where I could stick my left leg out into the aisle to stretch it.

Another residual effect was a cracking sound in my knee. I learned that the cracking sound is called Crepitus. Interestingly, Crepitus is also the name for the Roman god of flatulence (those crazy Romans had gods for everything) but I think that’s a story for another time too.

About five years ago, I slightly injured my knee, the same left one, playing in a field hockey game (don’t ask – it seemed like a good idea at the time – besides, that’s another story for another time). This time I think I tore my MCL (I never did go to the doctor, just self diagnosed via the internet and then self treated – treatment for MCL injuries is pretty much rest). The MCL never really recovered from that and was sometimes be a bit tender.

The knee problems were really only slightly bothersome. They never really prevented me from doing anything (well almost – they did prevent me from playing field hockey again but that might be a good thing) so I wasn’t too worried about them.

That began to change a couple of months ago. The knee problems started to escalate. Rather than be occassionally sore, the MCL seemed to be constantly sore. Plus I would only have to remain in a sitting position for a few minutes and the knee pain would start. Minor trips, like just stubbing my toe, would cause a shooting pain in my knee. I started having constant left knee pain while lying down and finding a position comfortable enough to sleep became a problem. After minor exercise, like playing golf, both knees would tighten up and walking down stairs would be an effort – I’d look like an 80 year old man.

This time my internet research had me convinced that I had arthritis. Just typing in “knee pain” in Google takes you to this post at the top of the list. When you click on the arthritis link, you are presented with a series of Q and A’s with this one being most prominent.

Who develops knee arthritis?
Knee arthritis typically affects patients over 50 years of age. It is more common in patients who are overweight, and weight loss tends to reduce the symptoms associated with knee arthritis. There is also a genetic predisposition of this condition, meaning knee arthritis tends to run in families. Other factors that can contribute to developing knee arthritis include trauma to the knee, meniscus tears or ligament damage, and fractures to the bone around the joint.

Let’s see: I’m over 50. I’m overweight. I’ve had ligament damage. My kneecap was fractured. I seemed like an ideal candidate.

I was all ready to rush off to Lisa to get her advice when I deciced I’d better go see a doctor first. I had my first appointment last week.

First, the good news. The xrays showed that I still have substantial cartilage in my knees and I’m not even close to getting to a bone on bone situation. Plus, while there were slight signs of prearthric conditions in my knees, my personal diagnosis of arthritis appeared to be incorrect.

Now, the bad news. My kneecap did not heal corrently from my surgery 40 years ago. The two halves of the kneecap did not align perfectly when they fused together so I have a well defined ridge along the fracture line. That ridge is what causes the Crepitus (at least, it’s what causes the knee Crepitus). That, in and of itself, is not necessarily a problem. The concern is what has that ridge done to the cartilage that it constantly rubs against. Xrays can’t detect damage to soft tissues like cartilage.

I am also suffering from a hereditary condition called chondro-something (I missed the last part). Basically, I’m getting small calcium deposits in the cartilage in my knee. A couple of the calcium deposits have grown large enough that they are approaching being bone spurs. Treatment for the condition involves either injections or orthoscopic surgery depending on the extent of damage the calcium deposits have caused to my ligaments. I’ll need to have an MRI to determine how far gone the damage is and I’m scheduled for that next week.

I’ll updated when I have more info.

Gary called last night to check up on me since I hadn’t posted on the blog for a while (thanks for looking out for me Gar). He was concerned since it appeared I was coming down with something while out in Chicago. When I got back, I just hunkered down for four days and took it extra easy. It looks like I shook whatever bug it was (or maybe my asthma medicine really did something) because the sore throat and cough are gone knock on wood).

Just got back from my checkup following surgery. The doctor has given me a clean bill of health and says I can resume normal activities with no restrictions. My stomach still looks like I’ve been in a knife fight but other than that I’m fine. I even dropped about 10 lbs (206 on the bathroom scale this AM) and I’m going to try to keep it off.