Waking Up With the Knee-pain Fairy
I have been visited by the Knee-pain Fairy.
People I have known who have complained of knee pain seem to me to have had it for years, a kind of annoyance, nagging them and getting progressively worse over time. Even though I have been overweight for years, I knew I was fortunate to not be plagued by knee pain. Until this year.
I think it started with Wii Fit. (rft*##!gr@) I had been using it for yoga and step aerobics and stuff and being very careful and conservative, and doing very well. But, I got bored with the same-old, same-old and one fateful day, I decided to try the jogging exercise. I was ever so gentle and jogged a little around my living room. This was a bad idea for the knees. It was after that that I felt twinges and aches in my right knee.
I babied it, iced it, took pain reliever and then ignored it, figuring it would eventually go away. It was a little annoying, but I still got off the commuter bus 5 blocks early in the morning and walked several blocks out of my way in the afternoon, just to get in 25 minutes of brisk walking a day. It was something I could live with and I wasn’t going to let it slow me down. (To be sure, I’d never try jogging again, but walking is something we must do.)
I didn’t go to a doctor about it because it would get better, and then flare up, then get better, and so forth. Then, after several months, it didn’t get better any more, just less worse. I gotta get this checked out, I thought.
So, I called the orthopedist’s office and wanted to make an appointment with the nice young man who treated me when I messed up the tendons in my ankle years ago playing volley ball at my sister’s house, and then again a few years later when I had that infernal plantar fasciitis. He works in a group of doctors that together own the practice. So I call his office and tell them I want an appointment with Dr. P. “Oh, let me give you to his secretary Bonita.” I get transferred to Bonita but she does not answer her phone. It goes directly to voice-mail where she tells me to leave her a message. Geez. I leave her a message saying I want to make an appointment with Dr. P and I give her my work phone number to reach me. My work phone number has the benefit of ringing on my desk, and, ringing on my cell phone simultaneously. I keep my cell phone with me at all times at work but I do not hear from her that day. I get home and there is a message from her in the middle of the day on my HOME phone. Geez Louise why can’t “Bonita” just do what I asked? And why is this so hard? Pissed off, I leave it alone. For several weeks.
The knee still is not right. I ice it. It does not seem to help. Weeks later, I call the orthopedists’ group again and, thinking I can make my way through some red tape, immediately ask for Bonita. “Oh, Bonita doesn’t work here anymore.” Grrr. I tell the lady I want to make an appointment with Dr. P. “I’ll transfer you to his secretary.” At which point, I get, you guessed it: voice-mail. This time it's for "Linda." I leave a message. She calls me back at some inconvenient time and gets my voice-mail and asks me to call her. Gimme a break. I’m not going through that again.
A few weeks later, I’m still having three bad days to every one good day with the knee, so I call again. I stop the lady before she transfers me to “his secretary” and I beg her to just put me on his calendar because this voice-mail-leave-a-message-crap is driving me crazy and this is my third attempt. She takes pity on me and acquiesces. As she peruses the schedule, she says, “He’s getting married this weekend you know.” I did not know. “And then he’ll be on his honeymoon…”. She puts me on his calendar for a date four weeks later – July 26. I tell her I will be suffering until then so she will feel bad for me but I hang up thinking, well, at least I got an appointment. Maybe I will have some good days and maybe it won’t be too bad for my upcoming trip to our daughter’s college for a full day of student and parent orientation, and maybe it won’t be so bad going on the family trip to Minnesota for a week. I have been dealing with this mostly with denial and positive thinking which in this case are one in the same. There’s also drugs. Four ibuprofen at a time, and we have left over Vicodin from Mary’s car accident….
Enter the Knee-pain Fairy to whack me with her wand and tell me to stop messing around. Whereas I could manage, limping around with a little pain in the front of my right knee, all of a sudden, out of the blue, I got this explosion of pain in the back of my left knee. Completely different in nature from the one that has annoyed me for months, this one was a debilitating rod of fiery torture that made me gasp and made the knee collapse when I tried to walk. WTF??? !!
This appeared the night before our not-to-be-rescheduled, exciting and happy visit to our baby’s new college. Well. Denial went with me in the car, wedged in next to the Knee-pain Fairy. It hurts the worst after sitting for a long time. Like a 2-hour car ride. Four ibuprofen at a time also went with me. The meds did not touch the pain. I got out of the car and the Fairy assaulted me – BAM! – right in the back of the knee. YOWZA! I cried. I leaned on Gil for support as we started up the hill (goddammit) toward the campus. I had not squeezed his hand that hard since I was in labor with this same daughter 18 years ago. I was so amazed and shocked by the assault that it was all I could do to not cry out and embarrass Seattle as we proceeded to the school. Well, truth be told, I did not entirely keep quiet. I seem to remember shouts of Holy Moly! and something about fireworks. I couldn’t help it. But people couldn’t tell whether I was laughing or crying, so I think it was okay.
Thankfully, I didn’t have to walk too much during the day of meetings and presentations. When I did, it was pure, unadulterated torture. I would get up in my denial-best mind frame, ready to just walk, dammit, and whoa...! there it was again. Grab Gil’s arm, limp slowly, breathe. I was really grateful that Seattle’s day of orientation was separate from ours so that I wouldn’t completely ruin it for her. I did that at the end though, I’m pretty sure, when we joined up again for some last activities (like visiting dorm rooms) before heading home. By that time at the end of the day, the stress of fighting against the pain had worn me down completely. I was exhausted. I was tearful. I was desperate. Mostly, I was just in shock, not understanding where this came from.
I struggled through the next day, a Sunday. I even tried the Vicodin. It made me feel warm and loopy, but didn't help the pain a lot. I called in to work Monday and said I had something to take care of, namely, my ability to walk, and I would not be in. Then, I steeled myself to call the orthopedists’ group again. I called and told them my sob story and that I need to come in right away. Give me any doctor with an opening if Dr. P is on his honeymoon. “Oh, no – he’s back in the office now,” they said. Let me give you his assistant. Before I could yell, “Noooooo!” I was talking to Linda, (she actually picked up the phone!!) and explaining to her my needs. She said she saw an opening and could I come today at 2:30? “YES,” I said emphatically, and arranged to take Seattle with me.
I arrived at their offices with all my paperwork pre-filled-in, and using Seattle as my crutch. I held her hand in a vice grip and as beads of sweat collected on my brow, I approached the front desk and told them I had an appointment to see Dr. P at 2:30. The front desk chickie starts the “I’m looking through this computer screen full of colors and timeslots and dates” look and says, “Did you make this appointment today?” “YES.” “Did you have another appointment…?” “Yes, I did, on the 26th” I interrupt her. Gasp, groan, sweat. “Well, the 2:30 appointment is not for today, it is for Thursday.” “THAT IS A MISTAKE,” I assert, leaning forward, gripping the marble counter top. No way in HELL am I leaving this office without seeing a doctor. “Well, you’ll have to go back through that door and talk to his assistant, Linda.” Seattle assists me as I struggle through the door. I throw myself on Linda’s mercy, tell her I can’t walk, tell her she TOLD me it was today. More excuses and confusion ensued and I leaned on the counter looking pitiful. Finally another nurse-in-charge said they could “work me in” but Dr. P was already an hour behind schedule. I didn’t see as I had any other choice so I went to the waiting room to wait. I only waited a half hour and then I went in and saw Dr. P.
I was really worried that after all this, he too would treat me like a number, or only give me 5 minutes of time. But he was not like that. He was wonderful. He listened to my whole sad story, all my symptoms, my fears, my questions. He took x-rays, explained them to me, gave me treatment choices and let me decide how I wanted to handle the fact that I was leaving on vacation for a week. We decided on a 5-day treatment of oral steroids to calm down the inflammation and that I would schedule an MRI when I got back from Minnesota.
I filled the prescription and started to feel better the first day. The steroids knocked out the debilitating flame of pain behind my left knee, which meant that I could walk again — with a serious limp from the pain in the other knee, but still, walking like Fred Sanford or Quasimoto was better than not walking at all.
People who see me say, Oh, that must be terrible. I’m sorry to hear you are in so much pain. However, since the steroids calmed down the acute inflammation, I gotta say, I know it could be worse. I don’t have sharp pain or even very, very strong pain. But my body still experiences all the “side effects” you’d think would come along with that kind of severe pain, meaning, I feel weakness, shaking, nausea, out of breath sometimes. It’s more like, if I were hanging off the side of a building just holding onto a knot at the end of a rope, and after awhile, my muscles just couldn’t hold on any more, and they started to hurt and weaken and shake and then I’m feeling like I want to scream a desperate, “Ahhhhhhh. Oh my God!” before I fall off the building to my death – THAT’S what it feels like. Only, that’s all going on inside of me just standing at the bus stop, or in the elevator, or next to someone’s desk. It’s ridiculous.
And, that’s my overarching reaction to all this – surprise, astonishment, confusion. You’d think I’d get used to it. My mom said that some people refer to their constant pain as “an old friend” that they’ve become accustomed to carrying around with them. I don’t think of this so much as an old friend as an unexpected house guest who wouldn’t leave. Because it’s part of my own body, it feels like the house guest is perhaps a relative, at least not someone I can get angry with or deny accommodations. But this guest has invaded me, is messy, unpredictable, loud, rude and really inconsiderate; it clamors for attention and hangs on me, to the point that if my own children or husband go to rest their arm around my shoulder, old visitor Pain, shrugs them off, saying, “Oh no! That puts too much pressure on her.” I am not fond of this guest. I don’t think I invited her, I really don’t. I know I’m overweight, but my doctor says this would have probably happened regardless. And I know that both parents and several siblings suffer from the same thing and have had knee replacements. So, maybe this is just a family tradition for this guest to come set up house in the family’s lives and it is my turn. But I am still reeling at her arrival and still shocked every day that I wake up and she’s still here.
Getting up in the morning is one of the worst times. I do still have the plantar fasciitis, which is most painful on the heel and foot first thing in the morning. Add to that the extreme stiffness and puffy feeling in the knee joints and I wonder why I have not yet bought a cane. I know why: it’s because the foot pain I’ve had before and I know it can go away. And the knee pain I feel sure can go away too.
If the conditions are right, I set to walking and it feels pretty good. It gets better as I take a few steps and loosen up. “Yay,” I think, “I’m walking! Look at me walk. This is great.” And I find I have about 32 good steps in me before it all starts to dissolve in there. If I ignore it and pick up the pace to a normal stride for me, the knees start to protest and wail as if to say, “W-w-w-wait a minute here! What do you think you’re DOING? You’re not trying to walk, are you? Are you crazy or something?!!” And, like two gears whose grease has worn down to nothing, I push, but pretty soon there’s no lubrication at all and the gears grind to a halt. This is not helpful to just stop walking in the middle of the hallway, an intersection or the street. (This is what I referred to in Minnesota as my “minus 5 mph speed” which inconveniently engaged in the Mall of America and down stretches of Nicollet Mall). So I keep going, with an astonished limp, confused and frustrated again. After repeating this nonsense all day, by the end of the day I just want to cry.
I write all this publicly because I bet that there are a lot of folks who can relate, seeing as knee-pain is the most common complaint in an orthopedist’s office. I want to let you know that I too have a Knee-pain Fairy in my family tree and have had to deal with her moving in and all her rudeness. But this crisis has not been without opportunity and blessing.
At my worst, I was fortunate to read an article in a monthly magazine to which I subscribe. (Shambhala Sun, July 2010, article Questions That Help Us Wake Up, by Ezra Bayda, page 51.) The author told about his visit to Alcatraz prison.
“…it kept all its prisoners isolated in solitary cells. I heard the story of one prisoner, who when put into a pitch-black solitary cell as punishment, ripped a button off his shirt and threw it in the air. He would then get on his knees and look for it, then throw it again – just to avoid going crazy in the dark.
This example may sound like it has nothing to do with us, but the fact is we all have our own ways of avoiding the dark, and our own strategies for throwing buttons. They may look more sane and more productive, but they’re still attempts to push away our difficulties.”
I recognized the “button thrower” in me right away. Other times, I have described it as the “plate spinner” from the Ed Sullivan Show. But, there is certainly a component of my busy, productive, East-Coast paced life that keeps me distracted and unbalanced, throwing buttons in the dark, making busy work I say is to keep up with obligations, but is also to distract me from unbalance and dis-ease.
The article goes on to say that even though we know how to meditate, to bring peace and calm and an “awakened” state to our minds, when we are under severe emotional distress a different part of the brain kicks into gear as we go into cognitive shock. “Cognitive shock” – that’s a good way to describe my state of shock and astonishment concerning the pain that clings to my existence. He goes on to say,
“During cognitive shock, the “old” brain, which is based on survival and defense, takes over. At this point we’re likely to attack, withdraw, or go numb, none of which is conducive to awareness… we’re fortunate if we can even remember that we want to be awake.
When clarity becomes obscured by the dark and swirling energy of emotional distress, it is useful to have some concise reminders to bring us back to reality…
…It is absolutely fundamental for us to realize that difficult situations and feelings are our opportunity to awaken into a more genuine way of living.”
So, he lists some questions as “concise reminders” to help us apply our conscious, awake brains to the desperate, pain-filled one, to try to bring us into better balance. Questions like, “What is going on right now?” which is an objective, dispassionate look at what’s happening in my life. My answer went something like this:
I’m suffering a breakdown of my knees and my energy and my attention as the pain drags me into a deliberate slowness of both mind and body. This is happening in the context of a life of busy-ness and business. Rising before dawn, 3-hour daily commute, full, crusher-busy days which leave little time or energy for attention to some of the things I value most. Values that are getting short-changed in this busy-ness: healthful eating to lose excess weight; dates and visits and appointments with friends; focused time writing; watching and planning my budget better.
Another clarifying question he poses is, “Can I see this as my path?” Can we see that this pain is “exactly what we need to work with in order to be free”? My answer went something like this:
Well, yeah. I see that, I do. The press and pressure of my daily life is too densely packed to give way to my good intentions. To make headway on those intentions, those neglected values, I have to BREAK the whole apparatus. I have to deconstruct, take apart, chip away, break away and let fall apart, so that there is light between the pieces, so that I can identify elements and be able to shape and move them into a better balanced whole. This pain is completely consistent with the disassembling of my life. I feel like with every limping, stumbling, trembling painful step I take through what was my fast-paced existence, I throw a stick into the spokes of my life wheel. It sputters, it bends, it chokes, it stops. It’s not pretty and it is painful, but it is a glorious path and an answer to prayer. How else would I have penetrated the dense material of my work-a-day existence? This is the way my soul chose, as an answer to my pitiful prayers of desire and good intentions. As I painfully fall apart, and my brain lapses into defensiveness, pity and tears, sometimes I remember that this IS my path, and I think of how beautifully this is breaking all the things that need to be broken in my life. And then I feel really grateful. And happy, and strong.
Another question he asks us to ask ourselves is, “Can I let this experience just BE?” One of the central outcomes of meditation is the ability to let things just be, without layering on our own prejudicial judgments that something is good or bad, worthy or not. We allow ourselves to just see the situation as it is. He says that letting this experience just be
“… also allows the quality of mercy or loving-kindness to come forth, because we’re no longer judging ourselves or our experience as defective. We’re finally willing to experience our life within the spaciousness of the heart, rather than through the self-limiting judgments of the mind.”
To which, I answer, “Of course.” Of course I can let this experience just be. I can let this be my path. It continues to be an effective dismantling of my life. I move slower; I ask for help; I listen more, because I’m too exhausted and distracted to be thinking about what I need to say; my routine is broken. This is all good.
So, when I have mentioned to you, in the midst of my whining and complaining and huffing and puffing against this pain, that I know that this is not without opportunity and blessing and good, well, this is what I meant. I am awake. So be it.
Copyright (c) 2010
People I have known who have complained of knee pain seem to me to have had it for years, a kind of annoyance, nagging them and getting progressively worse over time. Even though I have been overweight for years, I knew I was fortunate to not be plagued by knee pain. Until this year.
I think it started with Wii Fit. (rft*##!gr@) I had been using it for yoga and step aerobics and stuff and being very careful and conservative, and doing very well. But, I got bored with the same-old, same-old and one fateful day, I decided to try the jogging exercise. I was ever so gentle and jogged a little around my living room. This was a bad idea for the knees. It was after that that I felt twinges and aches in my right knee.
I babied it, iced it, took pain reliever and then ignored it, figuring it would eventually go away. It was a little annoying, but I still got off the commuter bus 5 blocks early in the morning and walked several blocks out of my way in the afternoon, just to get in 25 minutes of brisk walking a day. It was something I could live with and I wasn’t going to let it slow me down. (To be sure, I’d never try jogging again, but walking is something we must do.)
I didn’t go to a doctor about it because it would get better, and then flare up, then get better, and so forth. Then, after several months, it didn’t get better any more, just less worse. I gotta get this checked out, I thought.
So, I called the orthopedist’s office and wanted to make an appointment with the nice young man who treated me when I messed up the tendons in my ankle years ago playing volley ball at my sister’s house, and then again a few years later when I had that infernal plantar fasciitis. He works in a group of doctors that together own the practice. So I call his office and tell them I want an appointment with Dr. P. “Oh, let me give you to his secretary Bonita.” I get transferred to Bonita but she does not answer her phone. It goes directly to voice-mail where she tells me to leave her a message. Geez. I leave her a message saying I want to make an appointment with Dr. P and I give her my work phone number to reach me. My work phone number has the benefit of ringing on my desk, and, ringing on my cell phone simultaneously. I keep my cell phone with me at all times at work but I do not hear from her that day. I get home and there is a message from her in the middle of the day on my HOME phone. Geez Louise why can’t “Bonita” just do what I asked? And why is this so hard? Pissed off, I leave it alone. For several weeks.
The knee still is not right. I ice it. It does not seem to help. Weeks later, I call the orthopedists’ group again and, thinking I can make my way through some red tape, immediately ask for Bonita. “Oh, Bonita doesn’t work here anymore.” Grrr. I tell the lady I want to make an appointment with Dr. P. “I’ll transfer you to his secretary.” At which point, I get, you guessed it: voice-mail. This time it's for "Linda." I leave a message. She calls me back at some inconvenient time and gets my voice-mail and asks me to call her. Gimme a break. I’m not going through that again.
A few weeks later, I’m still having three bad days to every one good day with the knee, so I call again. I stop the lady before she transfers me to “his secretary” and I beg her to just put me on his calendar because this voice-mail-leave-a-message-crap is driving me crazy and this is my third attempt. She takes pity on me and acquiesces. As she peruses the schedule, she says, “He’s getting married this weekend you know.” I did not know. “And then he’ll be on his honeymoon…”. She puts me on his calendar for a date four weeks later – July 26. I tell her I will be suffering until then so she will feel bad for me but I hang up thinking, well, at least I got an appointment. Maybe I will have some good days and maybe it won’t be too bad for my upcoming trip to our daughter’s college for a full day of student and parent orientation, and maybe it won’t be so bad going on the family trip to Minnesota for a week. I have been dealing with this mostly with denial and positive thinking which in this case are one in the same. There’s also drugs. Four ibuprofen at a time, and we have left over Vicodin from Mary’s car accident….
Enter the Knee-pain Fairy to whack me with her wand and tell me to stop messing around. Whereas I could manage, limping around with a little pain in the front of my right knee, all of a sudden, out of the blue, I got this explosion of pain in the back of my left knee. Completely different in nature from the one that has annoyed me for months, this one was a debilitating rod of fiery torture that made me gasp and made the knee collapse when I tried to walk. WTF??? !!
This appeared the night before our not-to-be-rescheduled, exciting and happy visit to our baby’s new college. Well. Denial went with me in the car, wedged in next to the Knee-pain Fairy. It hurts the worst after sitting for a long time. Like a 2-hour car ride. Four ibuprofen at a time also went with me. The meds did not touch the pain. I got out of the car and the Fairy assaulted me – BAM! – right in the back of the knee. YOWZA! I cried. I leaned on Gil for support as we started up the hill (goddammit) toward the campus. I had not squeezed his hand that hard since I was in labor with this same daughter 18 years ago. I was so amazed and shocked by the assault that it was all I could do to not cry out and embarrass Seattle as we proceeded to the school. Well, truth be told, I did not entirely keep quiet. I seem to remember shouts of Holy Moly! and something about fireworks. I couldn’t help it. But people couldn’t tell whether I was laughing or crying, so I think it was okay.
Thankfully, I didn’t have to walk too much during the day of meetings and presentations. When I did, it was pure, unadulterated torture. I would get up in my denial-best mind frame, ready to just walk, dammit, and whoa...! there it was again. Grab Gil’s arm, limp slowly, breathe. I was really grateful that Seattle’s day of orientation was separate from ours so that I wouldn’t completely ruin it for her. I did that at the end though, I’m pretty sure, when we joined up again for some last activities (like visiting dorm rooms) before heading home. By that time at the end of the day, the stress of fighting against the pain had worn me down completely. I was exhausted. I was tearful. I was desperate. Mostly, I was just in shock, not understanding where this came from.
I struggled through the next day, a Sunday. I even tried the Vicodin. It made me feel warm and loopy, but didn't help the pain a lot. I called in to work Monday and said I had something to take care of, namely, my ability to walk, and I would not be in. Then, I steeled myself to call the orthopedists’ group again. I called and told them my sob story and that I need to come in right away. Give me any doctor with an opening if Dr. P is on his honeymoon. “Oh, no – he’s back in the office now,” they said. Let me give you his assistant. Before I could yell, “Noooooo!” I was talking to Linda, (she actually picked up the phone!!) and explaining to her my needs. She said she saw an opening and could I come today at 2:30? “YES,” I said emphatically, and arranged to take Seattle with me.
I arrived at their offices with all my paperwork pre-filled-in, and using Seattle as my crutch. I held her hand in a vice grip and as beads of sweat collected on my brow, I approached the front desk and told them I had an appointment to see Dr. P at 2:30. The front desk chickie starts the “I’m looking through this computer screen full of colors and timeslots and dates” look and says, “Did you make this appointment today?” “YES.” “Did you have another appointment…?” “Yes, I did, on the 26th” I interrupt her. Gasp, groan, sweat. “Well, the 2:30 appointment is not for today, it is for Thursday.” “THAT IS A MISTAKE,” I assert, leaning forward, gripping the marble counter top. No way in HELL am I leaving this office without seeing a doctor. “Well, you’ll have to go back through that door and talk to his assistant, Linda.” Seattle assists me as I struggle through the door. I throw myself on Linda’s mercy, tell her I can’t walk, tell her she TOLD me it was today. More excuses and confusion ensued and I leaned on the counter looking pitiful. Finally another nurse-in-charge said they could “work me in” but Dr. P was already an hour behind schedule. I didn’t see as I had any other choice so I went to the waiting room to wait. I only waited a half hour and then I went in and saw Dr. P.
I was really worried that after all this, he too would treat me like a number, or only give me 5 minutes of time. But he was not like that. He was wonderful. He listened to my whole sad story, all my symptoms, my fears, my questions. He took x-rays, explained them to me, gave me treatment choices and let me decide how I wanted to handle the fact that I was leaving on vacation for a week. We decided on a 5-day treatment of oral steroids to calm down the inflammation and that I would schedule an MRI when I got back from Minnesota.
I filled the prescription and started to feel better the first day. The steroids knocked out the debilitating flame of pain behind my left knee, which meant that I could walk again — with a serious limp from the pain in the other knee, but still, walking like Fred Sanford or Quasimoto was better than not walking at all.
People who see me say, Oh, that must be terrible. I’m sorry to hear you are in so much pain. However, since the steroids calmed down the acute inflammation, I gotta say, I know it could be worse. I don’t have sharp pain or even very, very strong pain. But my body still experiences all the “side effects” you’d think would come along with that kind of severe pain, meaning, I feel weakness, shaking, nausea, out of breath sometimes. It’s more like, if I were hanging off the side of a building just holding onto a knot at the end of a rope, and after awhile, my muscles just couldn’t hold on any more, and they started to hurt and weaken and shake and then I’m feeling like I want to scream a desperate, “Ahhhhhhh. Oh my God!” before I fall off the building to my death – THAT’S what it feels like. Only, that’s all going on inside of me just standing at the bus stop, or in the elevator, or next to someone’s desk. It’s ridiculous.
And, that’s my overarching reaction to all this – surprise, astonishment, confusion. You’d think I’d get used to it. My mom said that some people refer to their constant pain as “an old friend” that they’ve become accustomed to carrying around with them. I don’t think of this so much as an old friend as an unexpected house guest who wouldn’t leave. Because it’s part of my own body, it feels like the house guest is perhaps a relative, at least not someone I can get angry with or deny accommodations. But this guest has invaded me, is messy, unpredictable, loud, rude and really inconsiderate; it clamors for attention and hangs on me, to the point that if my own children or husband go to rest their arm around my shoulder, old visitor Pain, shrugs them off, saying, “Oh no! That puts too much pressure on her.” I am not fond of this guest. I don’t think I invited her, I really don’t. I know I’m overweight, but my doctor says this would have probably happened regardless. And I know that both parents and several siblings suffer from the same thing and have had knee replacements. So, maybe this is just a family tradition for this guest to come set up house in the family’s lives and it is my turn. But I am still reeling at her arrival and still shocked every day that I wake up and she’s still here.
Getting up in the morning is one of the worst times. I do still have the plantar fasciitis, which is most painful on the heel and foot first thing in the morning. Add to that the extreme stiffness and puffy feeling in the knee joints and I wonder why I have not yet bought a cane. I know why: it’s because the foot pain I’ve had before and I know it can go away. And the knee pain I feel sure can go away too.
If the conditions are right, I set to walking and it feels pretty good. It gets better as I take a few steps and loosen up. “Yay,” I think, “I’m walking! Look at me walk. This is great.” And I find I have about 32 good steps in me before it all starts to dissolve in there. If I ignore it and pick up the pace to a normal stride for me, the knees start to protest and wail as if to say, “W-w-w-wait a minute here! What do you think you’re DOING? You’re not trying to walk, are you? Are you crazy or something?!!” And, like two gears whose grease has worn down to nothing, I push, but pretty soon there’s no lubrication at all and the gears grind to a halt. This is not helpful to just stop walking in the middle of the hallway, an intersection or the street. (This is what I referred to in Minnesota as my “minus 5 mph speed” which inconveniently engaged in the Mall of America and down stretches of Nicollet Mall). So I keep going, with an astonished limp, confused and frustrated again. After repeating this nonsense all day, by the end of the day I just want to cry.
I write all this publicly because I bet that there are a lot of folks who can relate, seeing as knee-pain is the most common complaint in an orthopedist’s office. I want to let you know that I too have a Knee-pain Fairy in my family tree and have had to deal with her moving in and all her rudeness. But this crisis has not been without opportunity and blessing.
At my worst, I was fortunate to read an article in a monthly magazine to which I subscribe. (Shambhala Sun, July 2010, article Questions That Help Us Wake Up, by Ezra Bayda, page 51.) The author told about his visit to Alcatraz prison.
This example may sound like it has nothing to do with us, but the fact is we all have our own ways of avoiding the dark, and our own strategies for throwing buttons. They may look more sane and more productive, but they’re still attempts to push away our difficulties.”
I recognized the “button thrower” in me right away. Other times, I have described it as the “plate spinner” from the Ed Sullivan Show. But, there is certainly a component of my busy, productive, East-Coast paced life that keeps me distracted and unbalanced, throwing buttons in the dark, making busy work I say is to keep up with obligations, but is also to distract me from unbalance and dis-ease.
The article goes on to say that even though we know how to meditate, to bring peace and calm and an “awakened” state to our minds, when we are under severe emotional distress a different part of the brain kicks into gear as we go into cognitive shock. “Cognitive shock” – that’s a good way to describe my state of shock and astonishment concerning the pain that clings to my existence. He goes on to say,
When clarity becomes obscured by the dark and swirling energy of emotional distress, it is useful to have some concise reminders to bring us back to reality…
…It is absolutely fundamental for us to realize that difficult situations and feelings are our opportunity to awaken into a more genuine way of living.”
So, he lists some questions as “concise reminders” to help us apply our conscious, awake brains to the desperate, pain-filled one, to try to bring us into better balance. Questions like, “What is going on right now?” which is an objective, dispassionate look at what’s happening in my life. My answer went something like this:
I’m suffering a breakdown of my knees and my energy and my attention as the pain drags me into a deliberate slowness of both mind and body. This is happening in the context of a life of busy-ness and business. Rising before dawn, 3-hour daily commute, full, crusher-busy days which leave little time or energy for attention to some of the things I value most. Values that are getting short-changed in this busy-ness: healthful eating to lose excess weight; dates and visits and appointments with friends; focused time writing; watching and planning my budget better.
Another clarifying question he poses is, “Can I see this as my path?” Can we see that this pain is “exactly what we need to work with in order to be free”? My answer went something like this:
Well, yeah. I see that, I do. The press and pressure of my daily life is too densely packed to give way to my good intentions. To make headway on those intentions, those neglected values, I have to BREAK the whole apparatus. I have to deconstruct, take apart, chip away, break away and let fall apart, so that there is light between the pieces, so that I can identify elements and be able to shape and move them into a better balanced whole. This pain is completely consistent with the disassembling of my life. I feel like with every limping, stumbling, trembling painful step I take through what was my fast-paced existence, I throw a stick into the spokes of my life wheel. It sputters, it bends, it chokes, it stops. It’s not pretty and it is painful, but it is a glorious path and an answer to prayer. How else would I have penetrated the dense material of my work-a-day existence? This is the way my soul chose, as an answer to my pitiful prayers of desire and good intentions. As I painfully fall apart, and my brain lapses into defensiveness, pity and tears, sometimes I remember that this IS my path, and I think of how beautifully this is breaking all the things that need to be broken in my life. And then I feel really grateful. And happy, and strong.
Another question he asks us to ask ourselves is, “Can I let this experience just BE?” One of the central outcomes of meditation is the ability to let things just be, without layering on our own prejudicial judgments that something is good or bad, worthy or not. We allow ourselves to just see the situation as it is. He says that letting this experience just be
To which, I answer, “Of course.” Of course I can let this experience just be. I can let this be my path. It continues to be an effective dismantling of my life. I move slower; I ask for help; I listen more, because I’m too exhausted and distracted to be thinking about what I need to say; my routine is broken. This is all good.
So, when I have mentioned to you, in the midst of my whining and complaining and huffing and puffing against this pain, that I know that this is not without opportunity and blessing and good, well, this is what I meant. I am awake. So be it.
Copyright (c) 2010
Posted by Carrie at 31 Jul 2010, 12:12 PM 
Categories: Health
Tags: Humanity aging personal growth Compassion Knee pain Spirituality
Categories: Health
Tags: Humanity aging personal growth Compassion Knee pain Spirituality
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