Getting a Leg Up

I’ve decided that whenever you walk in to an emergency room with an injured spouse or child, and the ER doc looks at the injury and says to you “Would you knock it off?” it’s a good thing. That means that he or she doesn’t really think that you hurt your loved one. It’s when they don’t joke around with you that you need to worry. An ER doc said those exact words to me last night when I took Kate in to be seen.

It was the second Saturday in a row that we spent the evening in the emergency room. The previous Friday night, as Kate was preparing food for work the next day she stopped and asked me if her knee looked swollen. It was a silly question, as the knee was huge. She said that she did not know how or if she injured it, but that it had been bothering her all day.

The next day she worked a 12 hour shift on the bad knee, which made things worse. By the time she got home, everything from the knee down looked as though it would pop. We went to the ER and they ran a bunch of tests and even tried to drain the knee. But there was nothing to drain, and the tapping of the knee just hurt her even worse.

Kate spent the week with the leg elevated and iced. But by Friday night the swelling hadn’t gone down, and she had started to bruise. By the time she finished her 12 hour shift yesterday she could barely walk. I took her in again last night after her co-workers had convinced her to get seen, claiming that she might have a pulmonary embolism. The good news and bad news is that they found nothing in the ER last night after x-rays, ultrasounds and EKGs. They gave her some pain meds and told her to keep off of it until she could get in to see a vascular surgeon.

I will post once we know more. Hopefully it is some kind of infection that is easily treated. We’re keeping our fingers crossed that it is not related to her health problems from last year or that it is something that will require surgery. Right now we’re just hoping for some answers.