Hanley 1
Jessica Hanley
Mr. Westerberg
English, Period 5
February 13, 2009
Kneecap Dislocation
I. The Question
“C'mon, Jessica!” Elizabeth yelled excitedly. Elizabeth, my best friend, and I were at her house trying to climb up the waterslide instead sliding down it. Losing my grip, yet again, I slid down the slide laughing and breathing in the summer air. But as I came closer to the bottom of the slide I felt excruciating pain down at my knee. I quickly looked at my knee and saw that my knee was not in the center my leg. In a split second,I remembered one night my dad came home with a dislocated toe and realized that that is what happened to my knee. So I started screaming so loud that it would be impossible for anyone in a five-mile radius not to hear me shriek, “I DISLOCATED MY KNEE!” One moment I was exceptionally blissful and the next I was screaming at the overwhelming pain.
When I look back now, I realize I never really knew what happened that day, anatomically speaking that is. I decided I would investigate the science of dislocating kneecaps and find out what Elizabeth saw.
II. The Search
Curious to start my inquiry, I called up Elizabeth. At first, she had little to say about that summer day, but once she started talking about it, her memories came flooding back to her. She remembered we were trying climb up the slide and we kept sliding back down. Elizabeth had almost climbed up to the top of the slide when she noticed that I was not following her anymore. In a second later, she heard something very high-pitched and loud. The scream, in fact, was me at the bottom of the slide screaming in pain. Wondering why there was an outcry, she quickly went over to me and observed that something was sticking out of my leg. Elizabeth helped me reinstate the memories that I obviously had forgotten. With this information we then put our memories together to find out what was the cause of the dislocation.
After remembering all she could about the incident, we started to ponder how this circumstance arose. Both of us could not recollect any force causing dislocation, so we started an investigation. We launched our exploration with ruling out the obvious, such as the wind. Elizabeth then suggested a reason everyone seems to think incited the event, tripping. We came to a conclusion that tripping was not an option because if I did fall the ground was just bouncy, blown up material. Tripping would not be an option unless I hit something. For example, if I hit my knee against the slide it could have just been enough force to make it slide out of the socket but neither of us recalled hearing or feeling that kind of an impact. So after omitting almost everything, we settled on weak muscles. If my muscles were not strong enough my knee could spontaneously dislocate. We concluded that this was the only possibility that would have caused my kneecap to be pushed out. Since it was only Elizabeth who witnessed this occasion and I the participant, we will never know what truly came about that sunny summer day.
DIALOGUE FORMAT
1. Always skip a line and indent when you have a new speaker.
2. Replace a period with a comma if you are citing who spoke, and then place a period at the end of the citation. Replace a comma with a question mark or an exclamation point when needed.
3. Vary your use of the word “said” to avoid repetition. “Remarked, questioned, whispered, shouted, responded…” etc.
Knowing a little more about what caused my knee to dislocate, it was time to start learning about the science behind dislocating knees. I asked my doctor what occurs when a knee is dislocated. “A dislocation of the patella occurs when the kneecap comes completely out of its groove and rests on the outside of the knee joint,” he explained.
I asked, “What’s the patella?”
“The patella is a ligament,” he replied.“It is located between the thigh bone and the shin bone.”
“That’s great information doc!”
Already aware of this from experience, I asked him for any literature on knee dislocation and spent the evening reading a manual he provided. I noticed in order for a knee dislocation to transpire a sudden accident does not have to occur. A dislocation could come about if a person is “loose-jointed” which explains why I keep dislocating my kneecaps and why Elizabeth and I do not have a memory of how my knee seemed to slide out of my joint. The rest of the website included big medical words I did not understand. Then I realized that in order to truly understand dislocations one must know the medical aspects of it.
In order to accomplish understanding the medical terms I decided it would be best to talk to a doctor. I choose to approach my mom about this matter because fortunately, she is a doctor. Meddlesome on what bones make up the knee, I asked my first question.
To Be Continued…