Surgery

11/15/04

I went to Dr. Warren King today, an orthopedic surgeon, and brought him the MRI scans I took on Friday. His assistant Laurel (a very nice lady) did a few tests and said my MCL is torn, plus there is a little fluid in the knee cavity, but she didn't think my ACL was damaged. Then Dr. King came in, looked at the MRI, did a few stress and torque tests, and said my ACL is torn.

Laurel verified this by using this weird beeping contraption that measured the amount of movement when my tibia is gently pulled away from my femur. The machine said I have 9mm of displacement on my right knee but only 2mm on my left. Yup, my ACL is torn completely.

This came as such a shock to me. Everyone had said it didn't seem like my ACL was torn, because I didn't have the infamous "hanging leg" after the injury, and while my stability wasn't great, it also wasn't catastrophic. Dr. King pointed out that in the MRI my ACL is sagging a bit, which is abnormal and suggests it was torn from where it anchored to the femur. In a few weeks, the ACL will be gone completely because my body will reabsorb the tissue.

I guess I hadn't really thought about surgery that seriously, although I thought I would be prepared for the verdict. I knew the MCL and possibly meniscus were torn. MCL heals on its own, and meniscus only requires surgery if it's torn badly. So I wasn't certain I would need to go under the knife.

But a torn ACL guaranteed surgery and a painful physical therapy. There's no other option for that kind of injury if I want to resume an active lifestyle.

So my surgery date is November 24th, the day before Thanksgiving. Good thing we had canceled our plans to go to Monterey when I first got injured. My follow up appointment is November 29th, and after that will be several weeks of physical therapy.

On the writing front, I got news that my manuscript was rejected by Harvest House, Bethany House, Warner Books and Steeple Hill. Harvest, Warner and Steeple Hill were encouraging but not quite sold to the prose or aspects of the storyline. As with Jeff Dunn from RiverOak, Steeple Hill said to keep them in mind if I have anything else, so that is heartening. It also spurs me to finish my romantic suspense proposal and manuscript.

The rejection emails depressed me for a few days, but now that the sting is lessened I've been seeing the positive aspects of it. I also remember the number of famous authors who suffered numerous rejections before selling best-selling novels, so I know that editor opinion is subjective. My measly handful of rejections isn't a bad sign.

I went through a period of self-doubt with each email, wondering if God really does want me to write fiction for Him. But He sent me to Psalm 37: "Delight yourself in the Lord and He will give you the desires of your heart." This coupled with the book of Colossians (be thankful, give thanks, be grateful, etc.) made me realize I should just relax and enjoy this time God has given to me to have time to write. He knows the true desires of my heart, whether it be to write full-time or something else I haven't even thought of. He knows much better than I do what will make me joyful in Him. If I do my best to learn what it is to delight myself in my God, He will grace me with His joy and enable me to serve Him.

I am also suffering from a massive head cold, so apologies to Heather, Pammer and Squirl for not being on IM lately.

On an up-note, I finished a young adult Christmas short story the other day. It's mostly about forgiveness, but it ends with a sappy romantic note. I am letting it rest before I tackle editing again. It will hopefully appear in the December issue of RubyZine, but I am also planning to try to sell it to a teen magazine after that, for December 2005.

I have been seeing emails about the Writer's Digest short short story competition, but feel no compulsion to enter. 1) Because it's secular and my blatant Christian themes probably wouldn't even get in the door, and 2) I'm probably generalizing, but I think most stories that final in the Writer's Digest competition are literary fiction-types. I hear so much flack about genre fiction, while literary fiction is held up as a standard of scholarly perfection. I dislike literary fiction, period. It's boring to me. Give me some schmaltzy romantic story any day. Genre fiction usually holds to the requisite formula that Dwight Swain teaches in "Techniques of the Selling Writer," but so what? It works for me. I like being emotionally manipulated like that. I like the happy endings. I like the formula of: hero strives for goal, sacrifices goal for what is right, and gets rewarded anyway. I'm disinclined to enter the contest even if I had a great (genre) fiction short story idea brewing in my head, which I don’t. LOL. End of rant.

I think I will try writing more today, although this cold is making me miserable. I'll see how far I get before I take a Nyquil and go to bed.