This morning I finally had my appointment with the specialist, where I was hoping for some good news about my knee. After all, I'd had a pretty successful morning. I'd gone and gotten the referral from my GP, and at HSBC found they had all of my bank statements waiting for me. So when I got to the doctor, I was a bit blind-sided when he pulled on my leg and didn't take long to say, "Your ACL is completely gone."
He did a lot of pushing and pulling my leg in various directions, and nothing hurt, but apparently it was more about the movement of the bone in relation to the joint, regardless of whether it hurt or not. (As if the ligament were gone, it wouldn't be holding the joint in place properly). The key one was apparently when he was trying to pull my tibia forward from my knee (I think). The forward movement that he was feeling was really subtle, but once he felt it he was instantaneous in his diagnosis.
Apparently now I've got to go for an MRI and an x-ray to check for secondary injuries (something about a meniscal tear?), but he seemed quite confident that there was no hope on the ACL. MRI is scheduled for next Weds, and then I'm back to the specialist on the 20th.
But of course, this brings up the one thing I was really hoping to avoid: Surgery.
He said if I don't have any secondary injuries, apparently I'd be on crutches as few as 3-4 days, but if I've got other problems as well, we're talking 3-4 weeks, and then a full 6-9 months until full recovery. My head is still spinning about this (particularly on top of the immigration stuff), so at the moment I'm just shell-shocked and trying to take it all in. Of course, if the immigration stuff doesn't go well, trying to schedule surgery on top of deportation is just what I need, right?
Interestingly, the range of motion (why I can't bend my knee) is unrelated (unless it's a secondary injury). Apparently the specialist thinks I've just done that to myself by favouring my knee, and so that's why I need to go to physio before I can have surgery. The idea is that my knee should be strong with a full range of motion, and in pretty good shape before we even go in to surgery. So that's another thing...
Of course, it wasn't enough to then go home and process all of this, as I had to make it over to my lawyers office for an appointment to pick up all of my paperwork. I met with the paralegal, who surprised me when he said that I'd made his job easy, that he'd never met anyone so organised. Wait, what? Seriously?
He was also impressed when I handed over my final HSBC statements, asking how on earth I'd gotten ahold of them so quickly. "Good customer service at HSBC", I replied, as he told me that he'd never had a client who had been able to procure their final bank statements so readily. Seriously? Although good on HSBC, I'll definitely be banking with them for the forseeable future, as they were a major help in this whole process.
He went through all of my papers, and noted dryly at one point, "You're a US citizen, which helps." I really wanted to ask him what he meant by that, but I got the distinct impression that it was a slightly inappropriately racist comment, i.e. that things would be more difficult for me if I were Pakistani.
At least all of this panic about business travel was explained when my lawyer revealled that recently they'd had a rejection come through the office that they totally hadn't seen coming. He shared with me the not-very-reassuring news that, "It was an application just like yours, we hadn't seen any risk factors with it at all, and suddenly this rejection came out of left field, entirely unanticipated. So while I'd like to tell you that your application is perfectly water-tight, we never saw that rejection coming, so how can we have any idea what will happen to you?"
I realise the guy was just being honest, but I'm already losing a ton of sleep over this. His words did nothing to reassure me.
I then went back to the office (as now I'd done absolutely NO work so far all day!) to make photocopies and try and deal with a few issues. Found a random desk in the legal department where nobody seemed to want to make trouble for me, and sat down to try and tackle a few things and make a few photocopies of all the stuff from my application. (Oh, and as an extra bonus, the UK government was releasing completely new application forms the next day, so the lawyer had suggested that I might want to stay late in the office to see if they released them early so I could print them out. Great. So in addition to all this other drama, now I've got to deal with new forms too?)
As I was stuck late in the office, once there was nobody else around, I sent the Tall South African a text, and was rewarded with one back, so I called him. Ended up just chatting for over an hour until my phone ran out, hence had to recharge and call him back, where we continued talking until we realised it was almost 9 PM, and he had to go shopping in preparation for his trip to Scotland in the morning. I never even told him about my horrible day, but I just wanted to talk to him, knowing that he'd cheer me up.
And I have to say, he did just that. What a guy.
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