From the Editor’s Desk: Mid-2026 Health Check-In ⭐

It's been awhile since I last wrote about my health, and maybe I coasted for too long because now I have work to do. When it comes to basic health management, I tend to operate on autopilot, but this past year has been problematic. It was time to get a full set of bloodwork and a few overdue vaccinations and check-in with my doctor.

This is always complicated, but every time we come home from several months in Mexico City, we try to catch up on appointments and whatever else. Scheduling everything is difficult in best of times, but this stay has been particularly busy, with a trip to the Finger Lakes over Memorial Day, a trip to Nashville with the kids in mid-June, and then my wife going on a Mediterranean cruise with her college roommate. Where she is as I write this.

I was always going to check-in with my doctor, but thanks to the knee injury I mentioned in From the Editor’s Desk: All’s Well That Ends Well ⭐️ and another issue noted below, I was more interested than usual in making this happen. And I finally did have that appointment this past Tuesday.

The basics are fine: My blood work all came back great for the most part, my blood pressure is good, and so on. But there are a few issues.
🦵 ACL
I tore the anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) in my right knee while playing basketball in 1987, when I was 20 years old. It was horrifically painful, and I was in Albuquerque, New Mexico at the time. But when I came back to the Boston area, I had it looked at and then had surgery to repair it in 1988. The recovery time was about a year, but by that point, I was back to normal, dunking basketballs and getting on with life.

Until, that is, I tore the ACL in my other knee about a year later, also while playing basketball, but without the pain. I put the surgery off a bit this time because I was disappointed to have to go through all that again, especially given how much I worked on recovery. But I finally did have that surgery sometime in 1990, after I had gotten married. I didn't throw myself into the recovery with the same zeal that time, but my knees were fine and I went on to play in various adult basketball leagues all the way through 2017, when I was 50, and we moved to Pennsylvania.

Given how long the knees had held up, I didn't think much about them. And we walk all the time when we're in Mexico, it's a key component of my health regimen, and that was fine until late 2025, when my wife injured her foot, later found to be fractured, and couldn't walk as much. This was a problem because I rely on the walking to help keep my weight down, and I usually lose 10 or even 15 pounds during our longer stays there. But I did not benefit from that in late 2025.

By the end of last year, Stephanie's foot healed, but I started noticing something off with my right knee. This was weird at first, and then concerning. And by the time we went back to Mexico in January, it was obvious that something was wrong. I was hoping it wasn't my ACL...