Dr. Evil and the Gimp

Okay, let's start at the beginning of this saga. In early August I fell, very hard, on the concrete sidewalk when I was running. At first I thought that it was just going to be a bloody mess that a lot of bandaids and some Neosporin could fix. Man was I wrong. I ended up on crutches for a while and had to take two months off from running. I slowly started running again and almost instantly had shooting pain in the upper part of my knee cap on my left knee, exactly where my scar is. I have been back to the orthopaedic surgeon many times and even had both X-rays and an MRI taken (which for a claustrophobic person, was quite an ordeal). Today I had my lastest installment of hell with Dr. Evil. The MRI showed that I have a tear in the meniscus behind my knee. I was a bit confused, seeing as I fell on the front part of my knee and the pain is localizing exactly to the scar there. I decided to act out the fall for him and explain that my leg was bent when I fell and I didn't see how something behind my knee could have been torn. When I asked the doctor about this, his reply was, "Well, crazy things happen when you fall." How informative! He recommended four weeks of twice weekly physicaly therapy. However, like all things health-related at Columbia, there is a wait and they can't fit my first appointment in until the last week in January. My follow-up visit with Dr. Evil isn't until March 1st. I have been instructed to not exercise until I see him again. If my knee still hurts at that point, he will fix the tear by means of surgery. In summary, I will have not been able to run for seven months come March 1st and I will have potentially jumped off the GW bridge from depression. Serenity now!