Would you rather ...?

Let’s play a game of “Would you rather...?”

Would you rather eat maggots off the streets of Detroit or be permanently injured and never able to run again?

Would you rather give up sex and alcohol for the rest of your life or be permanently injured and never able to run again?

Would you rather get beaten with a baseball bat …, lose all your hair ..., fall into a pit of tarantulas … The ridiculous (OK, psychotic) list in my head goes on and on as I contemplate all the things I’d rather do than put up with this knee injury.

Today I had a mental breakdown and was thisclose to scheduling an arthroscopic knee surgery. Even if there is no guarantee that surgery will solve my problem, I’ve exhausted almost all other options. Still, I’ve yet to have one person – not even the surgeon himself – recommend that I go under the knife.

For the past month, I’ve been seeing a chiropractor who practices Active Release Techniques (ART), which is sort of like a cross between chiropractic and massage therapy. He is so confident that my knee pain is an after-effect of some other freakish imbalance in my body. He thinks that knee surgery won’t address the root of the problem, but that digging his knuckles into my pelvis will.

Prior to this guy, I saw two different physical therapists, both of who strongly discouraged surgery and instead prescribed inordinate amounts of resistance band exercises.

Oh, and then there was the other chiropractor in Detroit, whose massage “technique” was akin to a steamroller running someone over.

I feel like one of those 10,000-piece puzzles that are impossible to put together. In the beginning, people see me as a challenge. Each time I go to a new physical therapist or doctor or chiropractor, he is so confident that he can fix me. But eventually, I am just a frustrating pile of junk that no one wants to waste their time figuring out.

Unfortunately, I am frustration with a timeline. If I want to have surgery as an option, I have two weeks to make up my mind. That’s when I have to decide whether to keep health insurance coverage under COBRA. If I don’t, I’m pretty much out of luck, since this is a pre-existing condition and no independent insurer is going to cover it.