I have known this was coming for several years, but since spring the need has become painfully obvious. I walk a short distance and have to sit a spell to let the sharp ache subside. It’s time to do something about it, a surgery I am not excited about, but am grateful can be done.
Not getting it done would increasingly limit what I am able to do, and I guess could eventually making walking all but impossible. As it is, it tends to throw me off balance, which could lead to a fall. Not a good thing at my age.
X-rays show that both knees are “bone on bone.” The cartilage that has greased the skids between the femur and the tibia in both legs has disappeared, somewhere. But at this point, the pain is most acute in the left side so that’s where we will start. (I guess if the surgeon accidentally replaces the right knee, that will be okay, too, because one day it will come to that, should I live long enough. But to make sure he won’t do that now, he has suggested I scrawl a bold “no” on my right knee the night before the operation.)
So, this means abandoning the natural knee I was born with over 78 years ago for a knee manufactured (maybe last week?) out of inanimate materials. Living pieces of me that have always been part of me will be forcibly removed, set aside, and destroyed to be replaced by lifeless objects designed and fashioned by people I will never know and who have no idea who I am or what my life has been and still hopes to be. It’s disconcerting.
Even my surgeon will hardly know me beyond my left knee, and I certainly know little about him except that I’ve heard good reports about his work, which is all I really need to know about him anyway. Not quite the same relationship as I have with the One from whom “my frame was not hidden…when I was being made in secret”—Psalm 139:15—the One whose surgical practice is generally limited to the rib cage and heart, and who also does good work.
Then there’s the fact that I am taller than average. Having been 6’6” in my prime, my longish legs have been part of who I am to everyone who sees me, many of whom, after scanning me from head to toe, have asked if I played basketball, often expressing extreme disappointment in my answer, as if it were theirs to judge.
I’m a couple of inches shorter now, mostly a matter of my spine compressing, so my legs are probably a larger percentage of my height than when I was younger. Finding clothes and furniture that actually fit me has always been a challenge.
If my legs have been subject of more attention than many peoples’ legs are, it is not because of any beauty or muscles. It's just that Monday someone will be messing with one of them while I snooze. Hey, that’s my leg, my knee, my divinely-wrought frame!
Of course, my concerns are nothing compared to the concerns of people who must contemplate having a limb amputated…who lose a limb to illness, accident, or violence, maybe getting it replaced with a prosthesis. Mine is controlled removal and carefully planned replacement, wholly within my power to accept or decline. I have it easy, and am not looking for your sympathy.
But, if you have the time and inclination, send a good thought or prayer my way on Monday. I will be as grateful to you as I expect to be grateful to all those who are directly involved with my surgery, recovery, and care…beginning with my wonderful wife and first responder, Maxine, who may need your generous thoughts and prayers more than I do the next two or three weeks.
Talk to you when I’m awake again.
