A genuine knee-slapper

A physician familiar with knee injuries, asked by a reporter about how President Clinton might be expected to feel in the weeks and months following his recent surgery, said:

"Angry. Frustrated. Depressed."

The physician did not know Clinton; he just knows how guys who blow their knees out feel once they are immobilized. Listening to what the doctor said, I decided to get in touch with someone else who doesn't know Clinton - someone whose opinion may carry just as much weight as the doctor's.

"There's bad news and good news for Clinton," this person - a man I've known for my entire life - said. "The bad news is that he's going to be in a lot of pain, and that it's going to take him a while to come back.

"The good news for him is that I'm jealous of him. He'll be fine in six months. My knee is never going to feel as good as his is going to feel."

My friend, like the president, blew his right knee out - but unlike Clinton's condition, which involved a tear of a tendon, my friend's involved cartilage damage and progressive arthritic pain. He's had two operations, performed by excellent surgeons at top-rated medical centers. And he said: "I feel it every day of my life. It gets worse by the year."

But this story is not about pain. It's about the thing that Clinton - and my friend, and millions of other men and women - know to be true in their hearts, but hesitate to say aloud.

I told my friend that Clinton said he had always been lucky before - nothing like this had ever happened to him.

"Yeah, well, he's never been 50 before," my friend said.

Meaning: This is what starts to happen. If not your knee, then your back. If not your back, then your shoulder.

I said that Clinton's injury just sort of happened when he missed a step. It's not like someone whacked him in the knee with a mallet.

"That's how mine happened, too," my friend said. "I was OK one second, and then I wasn't OK. I can't even tell you how it happened. I still have no idea."

So what can Clinton look forward to?

"He's going to feel really depressed," my friend said. "And he's probably going to get fat. He runs, right? I didn't go out for runs - I played basketball. And then I was told, don't play basketball. It would just make the knee worse. I promise you, when he realizes that he can't go out for his runs he's going to get real depressed and real fat."

The thing about chronic pain, pain that isn't life-threatening, my friend said - especially if it comes during middle age or later - is that no one cares. They know intellectually that there's something wrong with you - my friend wears a long brace over his knee, just like Clinton will - but because friends don't experience the pain, the thought of it doesn't strike them as particularly important. Not their problem.

Except it probably will be - although perhaps at a different location in their bodies.

"From what I've been reading, the doctors are telling Clinton that he'll be running again one of these days," my friend said. "For his sake, I hope they're right. But I thought I was going to be able to play basketball again some day, and it finally set in that I'm not. You go through your whole life doing something that you really enjoy, and then you realize that you're never going to enjoy it again. You don't think that gets you a little down?"

So the point here is?

"Clinton shouldn't try to ask himself what he could have done to prevent this. Basically, he's just getting old."

And Clinton - or anyone Clinton's age - shouldn't be surprised when some body part blows out unexpectedly?

"It's more likely to happen than not to happen."

Is this news as deflating as my friend was making it sound?

"It's just the truth," he said. "We're getting old, and our bodies are starting to fall apart."

Is that perhaps too strong a way to put it?

"I don't think so," he said.

So what words of insight would he give to Clinton?

"Just that this is the beginning of the end," he said.

I told my friend that at least he was laughing when he said that.

"Am I?" he said "I don't mean to laugh."

Probably because it just makes it hurt more.

Chicago Tribune