Do you need an extra kidney, Joey? I’m really only using one of these. (Photo by Keith Allison/flickr)

Although it seems like forever ago, news broke only yesterday that Joey Votto’s rehab process had been setback a bit. Tom Groeschen reported yesterday afternoon that Joey had undergone a second procedure – this one to remove some floating bit of cartilage that has somehow mysteriously appeared in his knee.

Finger pointing aside, this will apparently set back Votto’s return seven to ten days, which, according to Red Reporter, puts us at an expected return date somewhere near the end of the month, or beginning of September. Really not the best set of circumstances, but either we weather it or we don’t – there’s not much to do about it now. I’m not particularly sold on the available players that we could get through waivers, other than getting a new bench bat, which we desperately need anyway.

It’s a little sad, that at this point in the future we don’t have some kind of crazy technology that will cure this kind of thing in a matter of hours. You know, something that involves bee stings and nanobots or something? How about jellyfish toxin and biodiesel? That’s makes sense, right? Look, we’re going to have hoverboards in three years; clearly modern medicine needs to catch up.

But I mean, we do have crazy stem-cell therapy, right? We’ve all got stem cells we’d be willing to donate to the cause, right? I mean, probably, no, because I don’t really have any embryonic stem-cells laying around, and I’m not about to go make some for that purpose. And if I did, it probably shouldn’t be for an athlete’s knee problem. But surely, there’s some other ineffective mumbo-jumbo that I can help out with right? I just need to  be able to do something to feel like I’m doing something. I’d bake him lots of cookies, but I don’t think that’s necessarily conducive to the rehab provess, and also, I’m pretty sure all fan-made-food is thrown out in a heap, under suspicion of crazed stalker poisoning.