Injury Update

I finally broke down this morning and went to the hospital to have my knee checked out before I left Baker City. The swelling has actually gone down a little and I'm a little more mobile then I was yesterday. But I knew I wouldn't hear the end of it from friends and family and I also didn't want to find out in 3 months that there was something I could have done at the time that would have saved me trouble down the road. I wasn't really planning on going when I woke up this morning but at 7:15 I didn't have anything to do and since the hospital was on my way into town I swung in before it got busy.

The doctor did some poking and flexing and took a few X-rays. His conclusion was that he didn't have a real firm conclusion; which is something any of us in a field that involves diagnostics realize is a simple fact of life. The X-rays showed no damage but he said with the amount of swelling something has obviously been damaged. Also, since this is the second time this knee has been dislocated (1st time was about 12 years ago) he thinks there's an underlying problem that's allowing it to occur more easily. He didn't give the impression though that there was anything pressing to be concerned about and to just keep it iced, elevated, and try to keep the weight off until it felt better. He did say though that the X-ray is very good at seeing bones but not so good at seeing any ligaments that might be damaged. He recommended that somewhere along the way I have an MRI done on the knee to get a better look at the cartilage and ligaments to see if something is out of whack there.

Although I wasn't real concerned about it I'm relieved to hear that. There still might be another problem that an MRI might catch but at least I didn't get a “we need to operate on that ASAP” response. This way I can try to work any further “repairs” into my schedule (if you can call it a schedule).

For your entertainment when I was looking through my shots from that day I found pictures that showed very well the mountain we were on when the injury occurred as well as the route we took around the lake and up the ridge to get to the car on the other side.

The line is green is when everything was peachy keen. Where it turns red is where I injured my knee. I pretty much slid from where the red starts to that rock outcropping below it. Dusty pretty much drug me down and across the remaining snow field until we reached the bottom. When we looked back at the area from across the lake we could actually see the spot where I fell and started sliding with the binoculars. I don't know if the pictures really do justice to the scale but if we'd been on the mountain in those pictures we would have appeared as nothing but a couple black specks.

I'm hanging out in Baker City the rest of the morning hoping a package will finally be showing up for me via USPS. I've been living with a bent leg on my tripod since last fall and one day in Idaho I had some free time and figured I'd try to fix it. Things went from bad to worse and now I have a tripod that only goes to about 2 1/2 feet. Thankfully much my my tripod work is done at ground level. I've ordered a new one though that looks like it should go along perfect with backpacking. It's smaller and lighter but should still have good height.

This afternoon I'll start winding my way to Portland to do some actual work next week before heading north to Washington for a 4th of July gathering with some fellow iATN members.