Knee update: my knee is not permanently messed up. The doctor’s best guess is that my leg muscles are all too tight, and pulling on my knee in weird/bad ways. End result: physical therapy. I am thrilled it is not surgery (or, as Brian put it, “going to town with shop tools on your bendy parts”).
Whew! Hooray for not-surgery!
I’d been assuming the worst for so long (as is my nature) that I was pretty much grinning like a loon when I learned otherwise. I suspect the doctor thought I was blowing her off when I readily agreed to doing whatever stretches I learned in physical therapy for the next year, when the truth is I would gladly do anything for almost any length of time if it avoided surgery.
But, yes. Happy day!