If that isn't a leading title, I don't know what is.

After a long stressful week, I was riding from work back to my car on my unicycle.  (Because the best exercise is one that you enjoy doing.)  It was a beautiful September afternoon, but something went wrong and the next thing I know I'm watching my glasses dig into my face.  I hit the ground like a 200 pound sack of cement.  On cement.

Cue the crowd of helpful strangers.

Well, I walked the rest of the way back to my car with a nice pair of women escorting me to make sure I was all right.  My right knee hurt a little, but my big toe was really painful.  Driving home was interesting but not really difficult.

I spent the weekend walking carefully around the house.  There wasn't any real pain, but my knee was well swollen.  I drove in to work on Monday and made an appointment to see my doctor to find out how bad it was.

(Health care aside: coverage in the U.S. encourages us to think "I shouldn't go to the doctor unless I am incapacitated."  That is probably detrimental to our overall health.)

The X-ray tech got googily-eyed and told me she was going to take another picture from the front.  (Digital X-rays are a massive improvement.)

Over the next half an hour, nearly everyone in my doctor's office popped in to ask me how much pain I was in. I was getting tired of explaining that it is NOT a high pain threshold if you are not in pain. None of them could imagine that someone with three kneecaps could possibly not be in excrutiating pain.

A rush of medical appointments later and I was in surgery two weeks after the accident to screw my right kneecap back together.

By this time, my brother Stanley had already called me "a special knees child" and claimed that I had an unfair advantage when playing "one patella, two patella."

And I was now in a straight leg brace and couldn't even sit behind the wheel of my car.  Let me tell you, that is no way to live.  Thank goodness, my sister Nina (pronounced "9-ah") could stay with my during my recovery.  Nothing works well when your leg can only be completely straight.  Can't drive a car.  Can't sit in any chair that doesn't have a foot rest. Can't sleep well because the brace wants to hold onto the sheets. And don't get me started about stairs and living in a tri-level house. Everything you need is on a different floor.

After 4 weeks straight legged, I finally got to start bending, 10 degrees more each week.  It was still a few weeks more before I could sit in the driver's seat.

And then there was physical therapy.  4 weeks without using your thigh and guess what? It is gone.  The word "atrophed" is barely enough.  PT went well because I had good range of motion from the start. PT's first goal is to re-establish range of motion.  Then they can start helping you rebuild strength.

15 weeks after the surgery I finally got released from the leg brace altogether.  I walked with a cane for another few weeks while I continued to build strength.

It is now 7 weeks after removing the brace and I'm still doing exercises to build strength.  I really don't recommend breaking your knee at all. Because I am very much aware of the fact that my recovery went extremely well.  I expect that I will be aware of the imbalance in my legs' strength for months to come.

So I've come to the end and still haven't mentioned my big toe.  The toenail was completely black, but otherwise felt fine.

"Oh, you are going to lose your toenail!" Everyone had to tell me their horror story.

I lucked out again. I still have the black toenail, but clean new growth is pushing the black forward.  It's only about 3 millimeters of maybe 12-15 which indicates that it will probably be about a year before the blackness grows out.