We're going to need to run another test

Saturday, the day after New Year's, I sat in the waiting room of my primary doctor's office and watched a couple of still-enjoyable episodes of Seinfeld on the flat screen TV, while waiting for whoever was available to see my swollen knee. I ended up with the physician's assistant. She maneuvered my right leg straight up in the air. That hurt? No. Bent it to the left. That? No. Bent it to the right. That? Sweet mother of...

She took that as a yes. Her opinion was that it could be a baker's cyst behind the knee. Or it could be a torn ligament. She wrote out an order for me to have an ultrasound on Monday. Somewhere in an insurance office board room, my name, with a big red "X" through it, was going up on a wall with a note underneath it -- DO NOT INSURE THIS WOMAN. Perhaps by 2011, I will have experienced an MRI, CAT scan, ultrasound and body scan on every barely functioning body part. It actually seems do-able.

So that meant that after work on Monday, I would have an ultrasound to determine what exactly was going on with the knee that now occasionally buckled and nearly tumbled me down the stairs. It had also become an annoying sleep interrupter every time I moved my leg. But with chemo looming on Wednesday, any kind of invasive curative was not going to be an option. And, beginning on Tuesday, I was to start a 3-day round of pre-chemo steroids. It was becoming transparently clear that it was not going to be a relaxed, stress-free entry into treatment.