Was supposed to fly today.
Yesterday I went out drinking with friends in NYC for 'two or three.' We got to the bar at around 4:45pm. I left the bar with one remaining friend at around midnight and ended up sitting outside the subway for half an hour because I wasn't sure I'd make it the hour home without having to toss my cookies. Half an hour later, disaster averted, I elected to cab home. Then at 6:15 am I woke up, packed, and dragged my still-queasy rear down to Penn Station to come back north to Massachusetts, where I had a plane reserved for 3pm.
When I got to the airport at 1pm, I decided that I felt 'off' enough that it was a really bad idea to fly an airplane. So I moved my flight (solo, just an airplane rental) to Sunday morning. I'm flying with my instructor tomorrow, if the weather cooperates - our first night flight.
Also when my friend came home with her daughter to find me temporarily back in residence, she narrowed her eyes and said "Why are you limping?"
I explained that I'd had knee pain since a flight to Austin a month before.
"Call my husband. I've never seen you walk like that. This is serious. Do it now." Her husband, mine other host, is one of my oldest friends - and handily, in this case, is an orthopedic surgeon. I protested that I could certainly wait until he was home to set up an appointment, so she picked up her phone and called his office and then said "They said come now."
I hath been Mom-ed.
So off I went. They took X-rays of the offending synovial mechanism, and other than slight arthritis of my knee (runs in my family) which is asymptomatic, the knee looks fine on X-ray. So my friend said "I'm 90% sure you've got a torn meniscus."
That sounded bad. I asked. Turns out it's not great, but it's not awful - my knee is swollen and hurts because of the damage but I'm not doing it any further damage using it normally. The bad news is that it won't heal (this isn't tissue that heals). The compensatory good news is that the procedure to fix it (which involves excising the torn part of the meniscus, which calms down the joint) is an arthroscopic surgery procedure - so, outpatient, done with scope, small incision, etc.
So I have to get an MRI to confirm that this is what's going on. But my friend is pretty sure, and as he fixes these all the time, I'll take his professional word for it.
Ah well. At least it doesn't interfere with flying!