Fuck that hurt!

How in the hell I kept from cussing out loud while the doctor was draining fluid out of my knee is beyond me.  I have literally never been in that much pain in my life.  I mean seriously, that hurt so much I nearly passed out because of the pain.  The bad news is, I have to go back in a week or so and do it all over again.

Not blaming the doctor on this one, although it's partially his fault it hurt so much.  He did try to numb the area where he was sticking the needle, but where he numbed it he wasn't getting any fluid out.  Then he backed out a little, changed angles, and holy mother of every god the universe has ever known, the world went dark on me and it was everything I could do not to scream at the top of my lungs.  But I'll be damned if that part, where it hurt worse than any pain I've ever felt, didn't end up being the part where fluid began to flow out of my knee.

We're talking a pain like I have never felt anywhere in my body.  It didn't feel like when you cut yourself or slam your fingers in a car door.  This felt like a deep, hollow, explosive pain that is almost impossible to describe.  I really wish I could put it into words that do it justice, but the closest I can come is it felt like he was right under the edge of the patella and set fire to the back side of the bone. Fire started from potassium, or thermite, in the bone.  That's kind of what it felt like.

In all, he gave it three tries.  The first try didn't hurt at all but he didn't get any fluid out.  The second try was the one that hurt like a motherfucker.  That time he got 7 cc's of fluid but stopped when I nearly passed out.  The third time he tried a slightly different area that didn't hurt as much, although it still hurt, but he didn't get any fluid.  That's when we decided to give it a rest.  He used a lot of lidocane but he numbed things up before he stuck me, which in retrospect was a bad choice on my part because it was the wrong area and he didn't feel comfortable using more.  That's why we decided to stop, even though he thinks there's another 40 cc's or more he can get out.

Chances are we're going to go through the entire process again in a week or so.  He's ordered an orthopedics   consultation, which he wants me to have before my primary care appointment on Jan. 4, but if I can't get the ortho consult before then (unlikely in my opinion) he's going to stick more needles in my knee and try to get the rest of the fluid out.  I'm hoping like hell I'll get that ortho consultation next week, though, because I really, really don't want to go through that pain again.  I will if I have to, but damn, I'd prefer to avoid it if at all possible.