I've been away from the blog due to a summer research trip to Turkey and Syria. It was nice to get back into my work but after a few weeks it was a slog. That is, I struggled daily with pain in my knee and leg generally, and had to harness all of my mental energy to keep going through the pain. A compression wrap and some ibuprofin took the edge off, but the rest of it was simply sucking it up. As a result my muscles are much stronger and I am walking better than ever, but it concerns me that the pain will not go away unless I do nothing, which is not how I want to spend the rest of my life. I will probably have the steel plates and screws taken out in a few months and hopefully that will lessen some of the pain in those areas. Unfortunately much of the pain is inside the joint and in an area where there are no implants, just nerve damage. Although I try to be optimistic I fear I will just have to suck it up any time I want to hike, bike, walk around the mall, etc. As long as the doctors say I am not doing damage then I guess I can fight the pain and go for it. Here are some images of my summer fieldwork.
