I didn't even consider the possibility that she hasn't had surgery yet. I thought that's what the bedrest was for. Ligaments of the knee, like the MCL, ACL, and Meniscus, simply don't heal on their own.
My personal observation is that if it's not life-threatening, and especially if you have shitty insurance, getting needed surgery lined up can take a while. My stepdad, who I mentioned earlier, had good insurance and no complicating factors, and had MCL surgery five days after the initial injury, at a surgical center outside the hospital that originally saw him; IIRC, that was considered quick.
Tess is a massive deathfat who poses a high anesthesia risk as well as difficulties in performing the surgery itself. Then there's the high potential for post-op complications. We don't know what other health conditions she has—namely, diabetes or CV issues. And you can't tell me she has good insurance.
So she may be stuck waiting until they can find an anesthesiologist willing to put her under, and an orthopedic surgeon willing to do the job, and she's probably going to have to have it done in a hospital, given that she's a high-risk patient. If it's not a complete tear, she may never get surgery, even if it's warranted, just because her obesity poses so many problems.
Evie Noor/Finding Evie, who has her own thread here, waited for months in hospital to have a broken ankle put back together because she's fatter than Tess and finding a willing surgeon took a while. She didn't like wearing the fatty-modified boot brace she was given post-op, which left her with a permanently fucked-up ankle she can only walk a few steps on at a time. Honestly, I expect Tess to end up the same way.
I imagine apartment hunting in LA is slightly similar to NYC where the cheaper apartments are like on a higher floor with no elevator. That living place needs to be on the ground or have an elevator, she is so fucked by this.
Cheaper apartments in LA are in shittier outlying areas, or else are crappy older buildings, mostly from the '50s-'80s, that either haven't been rehabbed, or have undergone a cheap rehab/condo conversion job (where Tess currently lives is the latter; it was originally a house built in the '20s).
Keep in mind that NYC developed vertically, with lots of low- and mid-rise walk-up buildings before steel framing and elevators made high-rise apartments possible, while LA developed outward, because its big bursts of growth all happened after the automobile came along. So there are lots and lots of older 1-3 story apartment buildings in LA, and finding a ground-floor unit with no steps is possible. There's also been a huge push over the last decade to build mid- and high-rise apartments, which all have elevators (IIRC, the ADA stipulates that any commercial or multi-family building three stories or higher has to have at least one), and a certain number have to be set aside for low-income tenants. So if Tess ends up on disability and qualifies for Section 8 housing, she could end up living in a halfway decent newer building with an elevator again.
She lives in a newer building, there's an elevator.
She's not in that building any more; she moved out suddenly in January and was semi-homeless, AirBnB'ing it for a month until she got her current place—which is on the ground floor of a converted house, but still has a couple of steps to the front door.
Evie also was extra-fucked by trying to heal in a brace that was way too small for her.
Evie decided the brace was too uncomfortable and quit wearing it.
I'm not convinced she was ever going to get a great result from that surgery, but she sure as hell didn't help matters.
