Notes From A Wounded Photographer

The next best thing to doing nothing is doing something.

This week I finally had an operation on the torn meniscus in my knee.  This summer, after a brisk workout earlier that day, I was walking down a small platform on my deck when I felt an acute pain and sudden weakness in my knee.  Thinking it was simply a tendon twisting the wrong way I gave it a brief rest and then tried to resume the activity I had originally set out to do which was to barbeque a steak, but the pain and loss of motion wouldn’t subside.  When there was no appreciable improvement after three days I sought the council of my orthopedist.

After prodding and poking the knee, twisting my leg clockwise and then counter-clockwise, and sending me off for a MRI, the verdict came back that I had a tiny tear in my cartilage.

“How did that happen,” I asked the doctor with a bit of frustration in my voice.

“Well you see the lateral Fanungulator which is attached to the medial Keltakline rubbed against the Skeetulla Capula causing the meniscus to fold and tear,” he answered in his best Harvard Medical School-like jargon.

“So what did I do to cause that,” pretending I was actually able to make sense of his explanation.

“The Fanungulator and Keltakline are susceptible to chronological factors causing the fluids under the Skeetulla to be absorbed by the Carpulex Process reducing the amount of Mucosis Stimulata available to the knee.”

“You mean I got older,” was my sarcastic quip.

“Yeah, that pretty much gets it,” he said with a whimsical smile.

BTW, don’t try to find these terms in Grey’s Anatomy or Wikipedia.  If you actually do it’s purely coincidental that any of these “Latin” terms will be there.

So what does a reasonably intelligent man do when confronted with this?  Like any other aging red-blooded American he ignores it and hopes it’ll go away, which is precisely what I did.  After a bit of going easy on it and avoiding strenuous activity, it did indeed make a recovery, but always with a residual weakness that caused me to put a slight hitch in my giddy-up.  I didn’t wade as deep into trout rivers, bend as low in my Tai Ji form, kneel as often to weed the garden or get as low to frame a foreground subject, but I seemed to do ‘OK’ and accepted the new limits that were gradually creeping into my life.

Then I made my annual trip to Montana and one day, while fishing Slough Creek in Yellowstone National Park by myself, a Buffalo sauntered over to the trail blocking my return to the car.  My fishing was distracted by not only the presence of the Buffalo but the concern that solitary ungulates in this part of the Rockies attract wolves.  If this were an aging or ailing member that had been pushed out of the herd, he’d be perfect prey for the wolf pack that roamed this area and wolves love to force their prey into rivers weakening their footing even more.  Since I was alone, I reeled up and turned to get out of there but my escape route was blocked.  I figured it would be easy enough to bushwhack around the animal so headed off into the willows and deadfall always keeping an eye on the Bison.   With my attention distracted by the animal, I misjudged the uneven terrain and hyper-extended my knee.  Pop goes the weasel!  Ouch that hurt!  I made it back with tentative limping but for the rest of my stay in Montana was limited by the pain and weakness.

After a few scoldings by my friend who had caught up to me later that week that I really needed the operation he had had a few years earlier, I resolved that it was time to stop my denial and tell the doctor to sharpen his scalpels.  I scheduled the operation for after the holidays and now here I am with my leg up and iced, friends bringing in sympathy-meals from time to time, keeping me company as we joke about the limits of advancing years and the effects of legally prescribed drugs.  After two days of this, the drugs that is, I switched to Tylenol and used them only when I felt it was necessary.  Painkillers leave me in a walking, or should I say limping coma and I just don’t like them.

What do you do when your physical range has suddenly collapsed and you’re itching to take photos?  The recovery is not expected to bring me to my usual activities for another 5 weeks, but until then there are plenty of options.  One is I signed up for a four week online course with PPSOP, “Evolution of a Masterpiece,” with Danilo Piccioni.  Then I’ve ordered two books on Black and White and have been pouring through them.  I’ve been going through my portfolio playing with images that I had intended to Photoshop into abstracts or black & whites.

Being addicted to that intoxicating noise of a camera’s shutter’s “click-slap,” I’m getting my photo fixes with macros, close-up zooms, and off-camera flash shots all of which are done within a 50 foot radius of my house.  I’ve been swapping lengthy emails with a few of my photography friends and polishing up a PowerPoint presentation on HDR Imaging that I will be giving to the Norwalk Camera Club next month.  There are a few tutorials on Lynda.com that I’ve wanted to go through and now have the time to do so.  My computer’s keyboards have been greased up by the incessant snacks and meals that find themselves to my side, and to my surprise, by the time I fatigue from all of this the skies have darkened and it’s time to think about dinner (like I need another meal).  After my leg exercises and a little more ice I swap a few more emails and then it’s off to bed.

Those killer sunrises and snowbound barns will have to wait, but in the meantime if you’re clever enough you can always be DOING SOMETHING.