Shelby Cass’s Weblog

Here I am, luxuriating (read: flopped and propped) on my chaise lounge, post-op.  It’s like deja-vu, but not really.  This surgery was on a body part well below my neck and not, I believe, a contributer to sleep apnea.  Although, I did hypothesize to my surgeon that the reason none of my previous forays into this particular body part repair in essence failed previously was due to the fact that I did not breathe at night, hence had greatly diminished my healing power, and he agreed there was a high likelihood I was right.  I love being right…or even people suspecting I am right.  It just feels so…RIGHT. But I digress as usual. Please do keep in mind surgery was this morning so I’m still in the “don’t operate heavy machinery” zone – which is why I am using a laptop! (ba-dum-bum)

What was it this time?  (Believe me, I heard that question plenty) Alas, it is my knee.  The left one.  But I’m already doing 50% weight bearing (as in 50% of my body weight) and little knee bends (per doctor’s instructions!  I promise I’m not jumping the recovery gun!).  How did this happen?  Well there’s really no easy answer.  Let’s go back in time a few years, shall we?

December 1983.  Or maybe go back even further to my birth.  This story is already too long.  I’ll put it in timeline fashion.

Birth: I was born “toeing in” and wore a Denis-Browne splint to turn my feet/legs/hips out.

Not sure if it was tibial or femoral, but nonetheless, I got to wear a lovely pair of shoes attached to a big blue bar.  I don’t remember this.  I do remember my brother also got to wear one.  Not my sister, lucky duck.  It is hereditary and my mom actually had casts on her legs to correct hers.  Now I don’t know if this contributed to my knee issues, but I figured I’d mention it.

Age 4: Enter the world of ballet.  It’s possible Mom put me in ballet just to help with the pidgeon toed swayed back pot belly thing, but the main point is that I LOVED ballet and I was evidently pretty good.

Age 6 (I think): I was accepted into the San Francisco School of Ballet on scholarship, and by age 7 I think I was dancing in the professional level.  I got paid (I think it covered bridge toll–this was not the lottery) to perform in various ballets, the primary one being, of course The Nutcracker.

Age 10: One of my parts was as the tail end of the Chinese dragon in Act II.  Imagine 5 girls harnessed together under a big dragon costume with only their legs showing.  It’s a short piece, but the guy playing the Chinese Dragon Tamer found himself in a little bit of a pickle when he vaulted himself up onto his pole (he would do cartwheels using the pole instead of his hands if that makes sense) and found his landing spot was either the dragon or the orchesta pit.  He chose the tail end of the dragon (aka: me) and since I couldn’t see more than the girl in front of me, I had no idea what was coming.  Boom!  Splat.  The costume even came up for a moment and I saw a guy in the front row laughing (not mean laughing but probably surprise that the dude landed on the dragon).  ER visit that night, back to performing almost immediately.  Years of PT and chiropractics.

Age 14: Lots of factors contributed  to my leaving ballet, but a big one was that I was watching more classes than I was taking due to knee pain.

I love this picture of the last full length ballet I was in.  Check out the knee brace AND band-aid.  My mom was so mad that I hadn’t thought to take them off before the shoot!

Age 18: Left knee surgery.  PT rocked me back into recreational ballet shape.  I think I would have been good to go.

Age 19: Car accident.  Woman ran a red light and hit me while I was turning Left across an  intersection with a green arrow.  Hit right knee on steering wheel.  College student = no money so no treatment until knee started locking and I started falling.  It was actually kind of funny except for the horrible sudden pain.  I mean, how many 19 year old girls do you see falling out of cars when they are trying to exit when they are NOT drunk?

Age 22: Right knee surgery.  (Doc found pieces of cartilage hanging out in joint, one was the size of a quarter – it had been growing for 3 years. I believe the limping and falling thing was probably what tore the Left knee up again.  No PT (recent college grad also = no $), which resulted in bad knee tracking which led to shredding the cartilage up.

~Age 26: After trying to take Tai Chi and asking my instructor: Is this walk supposed to hurt?  Right knee surgery.  Doc said it looked like “shredded crab meat” on back of knee.  It’s supposed to be smooth like a cue ball.

~Age 26 6 weeks later: Left knee surgery.  Doc found the back of this knee fractured from stress.  When I woke up he said “Well, it wasn’t in your head, it was in your knee!  It was broken!”  6+ months of PT and they still couldn’t get me pain free.  This was when I started REALLY slipping downhill health-wise and still had absolutely no idea that I had Obstructive Sleep Apnea.  I think a couple years earlier I’d started getting “treatment” (read: Ambien) for insomnia.  And as we all know, you don’t give people with untreated sleep apnea sleeping pills.  Almost immediate disintegration of knees Rice Krispy syndrome I call it).

2005: Started Adult Ballet Classes for exercise – no center, just barre.  Painful, but no more than stairs so I stuck with it.

2006: MMA/GA (The BIG Sleep Apnea surgery)

2007: WHAT THE–I went RUNNING!  My knees were actually beginning to HEAL!

2008: UPPP (The small yet ever so painful Sleep Apnea surgery)

2009: Started ballet again.  *joy*  Not professional – nowhere near.  Just a little (yes, sometimes painful and definitely crackly when I bent, but happy) barre work in the Adult Class, but by July I was Jumping.  Unfortunately that also led to falling (with style!…and embarrassment) but I recovered and was back in class (sans jumping) the next week.

November 2009: The infamous Ridge Hike on Oahu.  The trail looked like this:

The Trail - uh, what?

I was told it was a 2 hour hike.  Yeah, 2 hours…ONE WAY.  It probably wouldn’t have ended the way it did, except the group I was with was JETTING up the mountain.  Way too fast-paced for someone with problems stepping UP.  And if you know anything about patellar knee pain, then you know that down hill is worse than uphill.  At 1 hour 45 minutes I was in way too much pain and kinda figured out (yeah I’m slow) that this wasn’t ending anytime soon.  I had to turn around and go back (using poor Courtland as my crutch).  From that incident, I never recovered and stairs became a thing of the past.  Also, squatting (which I do frequently when adjusting chairs and evaluating people for my work) became excruciating no matter how much I stuck my bottom out.  It was time to see the doc again.

2010: Stanford. X-Rays.  MRI’s.

Today: Left knee surgery.  I’ll post those pics later (don’t worry, not gross IMO).

Next Tuesday: Post-Op and PT.

I’m hoping my hypothesis holds water!  And I’m also REALLY hoping my right knee doesn’t take a big dump (it didn’t look as bad on the MRI so we’re going to try just PT instead of surgery) and fracture like last time!

Okay that was maybe my longest post ever.  Smac Out.

…when shall they two meet again…

Thursday was spent on the road.  All day.  Driving.  Well, I stopped to get out of the car in 1 hour incriments (1 hour evaluation in Los Gatos, 1 hour lunch with Max in Milpitis, 1 hour evaluation in Sunnyvale and 1 hour in the chair with my fave cheek spreaders at Orthodontist’ office).  I left home at 9am and got home-ish (stopped at Safeway) at 5.  Only 2 billable hours for that day, and sad sad news for my back molars.

You know how last time I was at the ortho I complained that my back teeth weren’t touching and after many many bite and grinds on the carbon paper the ortho feedback was: it’s just one spot, we can build the tooth up?  THEN when I went to Dr. Steve my DDS he said Uh no, those teeth are nowhere near touching and we can’t build a tooth up that high?  Remember?  I do.  I remember wondering why my ortho would lie to me…or deceive me…also wondered if she was blind.  Well, I wore that newfangled bottom retainer every day and night for months to fill in my gaps, and I went in for my follow up hoping for either good news or an acknowledgement of oversight.  There I was, sitting in the chair doling out ergo advice to the techs (have you ever seen an ergo friendly ortho exam room?) and here comes Dr. Quo.  She’s so cute.  But I reminded myself I was not going to be overpowered by her charms.  I was going to get to the bottom of this life of chewing on only one side.

She looked in my mouth, checked out how my retainers fit, and AGAIN said I needed just one spot addressed to get contact on the back left side.  She (like last time) noted there was a filling in that back bottom molar and that perhaps someday when I got that filling replaced they could build up the composite, but I had already asked Dr. Steve about that and he didn’t think my filling needed replacing for many years.  I was not willing to wait many years.  There was much ahhhing and oh yesing as I explained how horrible life was with the inability to make it even (do you make it even?  I like to chew things equally on both sides…don’t judge me.).  Dr Quo suggested a “turbo”.  A turbo is when they build up many many layers of composite on a tooth to essentially build the tooth up.  I had one before during the post-op my teeth are strangers phase.  So the cheek spreaders were again applied had I known they were coming I would have taken pix (because everyone needs their vanity taken down 1800 notches) and  a lump of composite was deposited onto the top of my bottom left molar.  Then Dr. Quo drilled and drilled and I chomp chomp grinded on the contact paper and she drilled more until I felt pretty even contact back there…                    oh but not quite.  DOH!

I asked to see a mirror and looked in my mouth and lo and behold there was still a very large gap between back top and back bottom molars (see pic from last entry).  My head did not spin, but my mind reeled as I wondered how on EARTH can she be talking to me about these teeth meeting when they clearly are not and are never at this rate going to?!?!  I asked, “So, that gap back there between the back two molars…”  and she interjected.  “Oh.  No.  Those will probably never meet.  After moving your jaw, that’s just how your teeth want to be.”  (Stupid willful teeth)  So evidently she knew long ago that those teeth would never meet and so didn’t talk about them anymore.  When she talked about teeth meeting, she was talking about the second to last molar on the top and the back molar on the bottom.  That 3 decade love afair between top and bottom back molars has come to an end.  And there you have it.  A tale.  Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury.  Signifying nothing.

Blarg.

Here we are again, talking about my teeth.  Really the only annoying ongoing problem post MMA (aside from the numbness, but that’s not really too annoying).  Why a problem?  Well, I personally like symmetry.  I like to chew my food equally on both sides.  If I have M&Ms or something small like that, I eat 2 at a time.  One for each side.  Symmetry, OCD, call it what you will, I prefer to chew that way…and since my surgery, that has not been able to happen.  grr.  argh.

When I first got my braces off I commented on the unequal feeling back in molar-land, and my ortho said my teeth would likely still move a little and not to worry.  So I didn’t.  But it’s been awhile now.  A too long while for me to be satisfied…and so I angst my irk here.  For you.

Here’s where I am in orthodontia: The retainer they gave me for the bottom had hooks that looped over my teeth to hold it in place.  Those hooks, unfortunately, started pushing my teeth apart and I got little gaps.

I’ve already been wearing the new retainer to correct that for a couple weeks so the gaps are not as pronounced.  In case you can’t see it in these pix, it’s where the bubble of spit is on the left picture (so rad, I know).   sorry.  In other words, the gaps occured between the teeth that some would call canines (though mine be none so pointy anymore) and the first molar-y looking ones.  What did you want me to say?  Eye tooth and first bicuspid?  Okay I said it.

So they made me a new retainer.  This one actually encases all of my bottom teeth within one piece of plastic with springs to pull the teeth back together.

While I was in getting this retainer, I commented (again) how my back teeth didn’t touch on the left side.  Once again the little pieces of carbon paper were inserted and once again I was instructed to chomp chomp chomp and grind…and I was assured that I was crazy (okay she didn’t say crazy)  and that my teeth did touch.  I also mentioned the numbness I am still experiencing in my gums and teeth, and then that was blamed for my crooked feeling.  But I know that’s not true.  I mean, yes, I am crazy…but no, my teeth do not touch at all evenly on the back left.  Here, judge for yourself and tell me how the carbon paper touched…I’m pretty sure it didn’t.

I went to see Dr Steve my dentist (he looks a little like my boyfriend and has a Shelby of his own) who was about to do the carbon paper thing for me (I felt he was unbiased but skilled in the carbon paper test) when he put the cute little dentist mirror back there and said, “Uh Shelby, I don’t need carbon paper.  Those teeth don’t touch.”  SEE!  Told you!!!  So I’m feeling miffed…but I do have to say that I didn’t peek back there before getting the new retainer so things may have changed.  HOWEVER: they do not feel different.  So I think this is how it has looked all along and I am … irritated?  Yes, that.

But from the front all looks good, and maybe that’s all people really care about (unless they are me and craving a meetup between upper and lower molars).

ta-da  (Just don’t try to chew on that back left side)

I’m also experiencing a little clickity clickity in the right jaw joint which I think is occuring because I chew everything on the right and non-purposely try to make the left molars touch by moving my jaws around (which doesn’t work, but for some reason I notice sometimes I am doing it and I stop when I notice, but still…it happens).

Okay have I ranted enough?

Here’s a little non-ranting story:  Dr. Steve wanted to make sure I was flossing and I told him I have a huge bag of those pre-flossed picks and I floss while I am driving.  He broke in and said “I’m glad you’re flossing but I can’t condone practicing oral hygeine and driving…”  I said, “I don’t look in the mirror or anything and he said “Oh…” and then I thought, did he think I was driving with my mouth open, chin back, and eyes on the rearview mirror peering into  my mouth?  I suppose I could have been.  But no, I just kind of mindlessly use that little pick thing… Geeze, now I feel like a bad driver…but I swear I’m not distracted!  I think I’m more distracted putting on chapstick (and no I don’t look for that either).  I’ll stop now before the non-ranting story turns into a rant.  Wouldn’t want that.

Next entry we’ll talk numbness.  Everyone’s favorite subject.