anything but the knees

I'm reading a book right now called Dark Horse. One of those someone gets murdered someone gets kidnapped let's figure out who dunnit kind of books. Some Russians just beat the crap out of a guy, well deserved but still brutal. The thing that gets to me is the description of someone getting their kneecaps broken. It just makes me cringe to read about someone taking a sledgehammer to someone's knees. Maybe it's because I have knee issues myself, but I can't imagine how horrifying it would be. I can handle reading about all the other stuff, getting kicked in the face, smashed with a baseball bat, but there's something about the knees that just kills me. I read a book once where the bad guys drove stakes through a woman's knees into the floor. That was the worst. Fuck! Can you even imagine? It turns my stomach. Even reading about Joel curbing Dane wasn't as bad as the knee thing. Sure, it was sad, but what kind of low-life steals a Shrek Pez dispenser?