I Can Walk!

I can walk here!

For several years now I've been dragging my painful arthritic legs around behind me, feeling as though my life had somehow ended way before it should have. I spent a lot of time either sitting or looking for places to sit down, since both standing and walking made me very unhappy. I discovered that people limp, not, as I might have thought, because their legs were different lengths (!) but because their legs hurt them. It was a good lesson for me--not one I asked for, but one that made me mindful of how many people suffer. There were huge mental adjustments to be made, as I faced my limited mobility.

Over the past two years I have had a series of three surgeries, with all the attendant recoveries and rehabilitations and sleepless nights. Stay with me, now, the whining is about to end.

And now I can walk! I can walk without pain or whining or crabbiness! I have ventured out rather cautiously around the neighborhood for the last three mornings, taking my new knees with me and...they work! I've gone from careful stepping to longer striding to a certain jaunty zippiness. I walked first to the nearest stop sign and back, then around the nearest block, and am mapping out routes that will be longer each day.

I can walk there!

Thank you to my family, for putting up with my whimpering and my inability to move around. Thank you to my sister, who acted as nurse and housekeeper and driver for months at a time. Thank you to my surgeon, who is as pleased with my latest x-rays as I am. I feel like I've been given another life.