One Icepick, Two Icepicks, Thr... GOTOHELL!

My last post referenced the icepick scale for  my knees. I thought I'd explain.

It's a scale of pain. One icepick can be thought of as how it feels to insert one icepick into the space under the kneecap. It's ever-present, but background noise as long as you don't do anything. Like, say. walk. Or cross your legs so pressure is on one knee.

Two icepicks is what the pain increases to when you've been doing a fair bit of walking, either in a long chunk or a lot of little chunks, even including a stint of standing. It takes a while after sitting down to fade back to a one, but as long as you haven't pushed to a three, it will fade by the next morning. Twinges during resting can be expected, even more so while driving when no weight is on the knees, but they can be tolerated with three ibuprofin on a regular schedule.

Three icepicks is where you push past the easy recovery point. There will be no comfortable position even while sitting after hitting a three, not for at least a couple days, and that only fleeting. With rest, reducing to the two icepick level can happen within about a week. As it's happening, involuntary tears threaten to fall, the lip trembles, and the world can just go straight to hell. In fact, at the slightest provocation, I would happily tell them that!