Knee Update: "Better football through chemistry!"

The line in the title above comes from the movie "North Dallas Forty," where the North Dallas Bulls' star running back with the muscle pull watches aging wide receiver Phil Elliott (portrayed by Nick Nolte) take a painful injection of medication in his knee before playing in a big game. It's Elliott's way (under orders from the corrupt Tom Landry-like coach played by G.D. Spradlin) of trying to convince the running back to take a numbing shot and forget about any potential consequences because the team needs him to play.

Of course, it doesn't end well for the running back. But I digress.

The spot is where the needle went in. Ow.

Something similar happened to me Thursday, although not for nefarious means and it certainly wasn't to get me into the big game. There's not much of a demand for 66-year-old, 290-pound wide receivers in today's NFL.

As you probably know, my left knee has been a mess since April (if not for most of my life). So earlier today, I had my first appointment with a very accomplished arthroscopic surgeon at the Brigham & Women's health center at Patriot Place in Foxboro (I'll keep the surgeon's identity anonymous for the time being, as I didn't think to ask for permission to use it). After X-rays were taken of my injured knee to accompany the results of an MRI taken last week, the doctor examined the injured joint and came up with a plan of treatment.

Most of the damage is to the meniscus below my left knee, a combination of injury-related tears and age-related degeneration. There's some bone damage and arthritis present, as well as a few stretched or frayed tendons in the vicinity. The ligaments, fortunately, are intact. So the doctor suggested as a first step an injection of a combination of a steroid and a pain-killer into the knee (see photo at left), followed by three scheduled physical therapy visits over the next month. At that point, we'll reassess the situation, and surgery could still be an option.

It would likely be more of a cleanup operation than a full-fledged knee replacement, but I was also reminded that some weight loss would be beneficial to both knees. Anyway, the injection seems to be a common first course of treatment for people that have knee issues that haven't resulted in full-blown incapacitation, so I agreed to it.

It wasn't all that bad, although I immediately envisioned the aforementioned movie scene and regretted that, unlike Nolte, I was not gulping down a can of beer as the doctor administered the shot.

Several hours later, and I am walking without the cane I've been using the past two weeks. I'm walking very gingerly and I feel as if I'm dragging the left foot a little, and any thought of pronounced lateral movement is out of the question. But I do feel a little more normal -- still a few reminders that all is not right inside there in the form of a few twinges of pain here and there -- and thus the next few months don't appear to be on the road to being as disrupted as I thought they might have been.

But we'll see. I consider myself way too young to be heading for a future of inactivity (inevitable as that future may be). These two battered old legs still have quite a few miles left in them, I hope.