Is There a Doctor in the House? I hope not.

Many of you may remember I have a sore knee. So sore I went to the doctor. I learned that I have arthritis, and to complicate matters there is some fragment of some kind in the joint, a bit of cartilage or bone, though I think it might be a nail, or possibly the remnants of a small submarine, some Fantastic Voyage experiment gone tragically wrong, now the reactor is melting down in my knee, and if they don't get it out the explosion will destroy the three block area surrounding the place where I work, including three separate, but somehow connected Verizon buildings. So, if you lose cell phone service for a while it might have been my fault.

Anyway, I go to the doctor today, the orthopedic surgeon, to have him look at my knee, and the x-rays and the tears running down my face. Then he will pass judgement on the severity of my agony.

I live in fear that he will say he needs to operate. Surgery is a specific place in hell to me. Anesthesia, unconsciousness, stitches, staph infections, complications, a list that goes on forever the messy business of floundering around in the ethereal neighborhood stretching from life to death. Already my stomach is twisting and turning, nausea and unvarnished terror, or maybe the leftover pizza I had for breakfast.

More than that, though, I live in fear that he will say, "there is nothing there, nothing really, a small piece of nothing, about half the size of undetectable. I don't know what you're going on and on about." Or something like that. That would be so embarrassing. Try as I might I haven't come up with any counter arguments for that. "Oh I was only kidding," Jokes on you, Doc." They all seem a little phony.

But, one way or another I will know today, and you will know tomorrow. For everybody's sake I don't post twice in one day. You can thank me later.

Tune in tomorrow for the continuing saga of my knee, or the new adventures of an old man, with a penchant for self pity.

And you thought you had problems.

On average, a person spends almost 47 minutes and 19 seconds (2.43 decaseconds, for those of you more comfortable using metric measurements), which is fine, because for the most part life is kind of rough, and we are only frail, mortal humans.  But, we should all spend a few minutes feeling sorry for this guy.  He had a pencil stuck in his head.  A Pencil Stuck in his Head!  Wow, that is some bad luck, huh.  If any of you have ever had a writing utensil stuck in your head, please share the story with us, here at Life Explained, we will feel sorry for you as well, and we won't laugh, we promise.

Pencil extracted from Afghan man's head

German doctors say an Afghan man who for years suffered from headaches, a runny nose and eyesight problems was found to have a 10-centimetre (four-inch) pencil lodged in his head.

A scan revealed the pencil's location so that doctors could operate

Surgeons at Aachen University Hospital removed the pencil and the 24-year-old is reported to be recovering.

The pencil had injured the man's sinuses and right eye socket.

When asked how the pencil had got there he recalled that as a boy he had once fallen and had a serious nosebleed.

The case was presented at a medical conference in Essen on Tuesday by Prof Frank Hoelzle of Aachen University.

The pencil was found only after a detailed medical examination using computer tomography - an image scanning technique, German media