A nice Monday evening and MRI images

Got home from work and Ben took Tanner for a walk (no playing due to the staples he has). I made dinner, and we ate outside since it's been so nice here. We had mojito marinated flank steak, campfire potatoes, and grilled asparagus. Can't get much better than that for a summertime meal! Then Ben cleaned up, and I took Tanner for another walk. I came across the cutest old man on my walk, Gilbert, I think. He introduced himself to Tanner and I, and then walked a few blocks with us. He was cutting flowers and such from all of the neighbors yards, fully admitting that he didn't live in any of the houses that he was "stealing" from. I guess all the neighbors know him around there and don't mind. So he was getting lilac bushels and the other ones that are white (don't know the name). And then eventually, I turned around to see if he'd come out of another yard where he'd stopped, but I didn't see him again. I guess maybe he found his own yard eventually! Tanner usually doesn't like strangers, but he immediately loved this cute old guy.

After the walk, Ben and I wanted to finish the Everest show we'd started the previous night. So I slid my bike away from the wall and hopped on. It's amazing how stiff and sore I am when I start to pedal. I can barely make it all the way around to the top and then start around again. But once I get warmed up (about 3-4 minutes), I can just pedal, pedal, pedal. Then when I get off, my knee is all loose and feeling really good. Ben got (or should I say, fought with - it was a rough 10 minutes Sunday evening...) a road tire on there instead of my mountain bike tire, so now you can't even hear it! It's awesome. Before it sounded like I was riding across super spaced out, really puckered cobblestone. I am only supposed to do like every other day, but I feel so good doing it, I might do a little bit every day. I wasn't able to do any exercises last night, I was a tad sore from the previous night, but I'll do them tonight and see if I can't get Ben to be annoyed again. Ah, the simple joys in life....

On a side note, I've had a couple of people ask me to post some of my MRI images. I don't have the CD anymore and couldn't figure out for the life of me how to save images when I did have it. So I found some photos online that really do look like what I saw on my MRI (again, this is not my actual MRI).

Here is normal ACL (notice the solid black band,

on a diagonal between the two bones):

Here is a torn ACL (no black band, lots of loose looking white/gray material) -

this is what mine looks like almost exactly:

Regular meniscus (all black within the area the

arrow is pointed at):


Torn meniscus (see the small sliver of gray within the

black area - that's what mine looks like):

Oh well, we fix, we rehab, we move on.