Today being the eve of New Year’s Eve, I took a long walk. Yesterday’s was even longer – I needed them both, eighteen miles of fresh air, some meditation and peace of mind, a nice reprieve from the last few days. As I walked along, I was trying to figure out how to bring together the handful of posts I have recently started and never finished. Not finding a way, I’m just going to just start all over. This may bounce around a bit…
A week ago today was the 10th anniversary of my knee replacement. I was sitting outside a café on a beautiful Austin afternoon, and wrote the following:
“It was 10 years ago right now (literally) that I was being wheeled into the operating room, December 23, 2009. And here I am today, Austin, TX, with a 10-year-old knee made of steel and plastic inside my right leg, firmly attached to my femur and tibia. Pretty incredible, amazing. A lot has happened in ten years, equally amazing.
Let’s start with the knee. Ten years ago right now I was struggling to walk. I had only about 40 degrees of flexion in my leg, and even that was uncomfortable. My knee was shot, functionally finished. Two meniscectomies had left me with a bone-on-bone condition that was extremely painful, and a total knee replacement was pretty much the only choice if I was going to continue to live an active life. So, a couple of hours from now, and ten years ago, my new knee was closed up and the rehabilitation and physical therapy began. There’s a whole story about all this at https://www.walktothepark.com/seventy-three, so I won’t repeat, but will repeat how very grateful I am for the great success of this knee.
A rough calculation at 10,000 steps per day, which is probably pretty close, gives us 36,500,000 steps – that’s a lot of steps. They say with every step you take you exert about 4 times your body weight on your knee. Let’s use 190 lbs. as an average weight for the last ten years – that’s 27 billion, 740 million pounds of pressure, give or take, which is a lot of tons. I would call it a success, and fun to think about the fact that roughly ten percent of all those steps were taken on a walk to the park within the last 4 months.”
I thought about my knee a lot that day and the couple that followed, recalling the hospital stay and those first very painful steps the next morning with my walker. I hated my walker, and hate is a word I use very sparingly. But I hated my walker, even though I had decorated it with battery-powered Christmas lights and little felt Santas! My walker made me feel like a very old man of 49, and my goal was to get away from it as soon as I possibly could, which in fact took about 6 days. I was very pleased to donate said walker a few days later, with hope of never having to use one again. There must be a better solution out there. Those first few days were tough, but nothing at all compared to the great benefits this knee has provided. Would I do it again? Absolutely, and I would recommend to anyone facing the possibility of a knee replacement. It isn’t a walk in the park (intended :-), it takes some work and overcoming some pain, but the end result, the regained mobility and freedom from pain are well worth the effort. Ten Christmas eves ago I was in the hospital, ten years ago and a day later, I was released, the best Christmas gift ever, the ultimate gift that keeps on giving.
I’ve also been thinking about my last post around sadness and depression, and some of the comments and conversations I’ve since had. I’ll start by saying I’m OK, in fact, much more than OK, most of the time. My words may have surprised some of you, for it wasn’t my typical happy, upbeat story, but it was not a surprise to me, for I have had to deal with these occasional “dips” for most of my life, and I consider it my own “normal.” I l like to look at these in terms of a sine wave, drawing on a piece of my scientific background. Remember sine curves and waves? Crests and valleys?
Fortunately for me, most of my time is spent above the x-axis, but I know there may be times spent beneath it. I also know that time will eventually bring me back onto an upward slope. I dare say every one of us has a sine wave-like pattern of happy and sad, up and down. What may vary considerably among us all is the distance between the crests and valleys and the frequency in which they occur.
My crests are awesome, and I wouldn’t want to change them for anything, even though I may have to pay the price on the occasional not so bright day coming down the line at some point. When I’m happy, no one is happier. And when I’m not, things get a little dark for a while, but I know nothing is forever and quoting my dear mother again, know that “this too shall pass”.
I’m quite certain many psychologists would love to slap a label on my “condition”. Yes, my highs are very high, I love them. And yes, I get depressed sometimes, so be it. I’m also sure that the pharmaceutical companies would love to have me on their expensive medicine to flatten out my sine wave. It might help with the down times, but might also reduce the ups, and I’m not willing to go there. I’m very wary of pharmaceutical drugs, especially those that mess with brain chemistry. Some may solve the immediate problem, but most are laden with known and unknown side-effects. I can’t imagine something that “may increase the risk of suicide” is a good solution. I do believe there are cases where drugs are indicated and necessary for mental health, but also feel they are being over-used way too often. There’s nothing wrong with the occasional blue day, it’s part of life. I’d rather just live it than take medicine to potentially keep it from coming around every few weeks. And if you can’t sleep, better to figure out what’s keeping you awake instead of popping a little pill every evening.
And while on the subject of mental health, I definitely have self-diagnosed ADD, but that’s OK too. I’ll circle back to this one at some point, if I remember 😊
Moving on…
I’ve had to giggle at a couple of things over the last few days. About ten days ago, I drove my daughters just across the US-Mexico border to Reynosa to catch their plane to Mexico City for the holidays. ‘Twas 325 miles each way from Austin, took most all day, but as I was driving into town on the way back, I realized that those 650 miles would have taken me about 33 days to walk!
The other was when I landed in Mexico City on Christmas Eve. Those 800 or so miles would have taken me 40 days to walk, yet I was home in an hour and thirty-nine minutes. Crazy. Oh, and btw, walking is much more fun.
And home I was. After a 20-minute Uber ride given the empty streets, I rang the doorbell to the same house in which I grew up, the house to which I was taken from the hospital after my awesome, Cesarean-style entrance to this world. And I slept in my room, just as I have thirty, forty, fifty and almost sixty (gasp) years ago. Great vibe in that room, all positive.
Christmas is not one of my strong points, though I very much enjoyed when I was a child, and when my now adult kids were children. I love the idea of the holiday, the families together, but am totally repulsed by the commercialization of the event. If I were king, I’d redesign Christmas to be more like Thanksgiving, but I’m not king. I love giving presents when I want to, but not when I have to. The best part about the holidays is being with family and friends, yet that part is overshadowed by the other. But I had a nice Christmas nonetheless with my mom, my kids and my brother’s growing family. I enjoyed watching the kids, happy on Christmas, as they should be!
Best part of my trip was just hanging out with my aged mother who turned 92 the day I arrived in Texarkana back in August. She’s amazing. At her age, she’s slowing down of course, but still walks up and down the stairs twice a day, takes three walks up and down the sidewalk, every day. I truly think this active movement has been the main reason she is as healthy as she is. She eats well, sleeps well, and though she may forget what she had for breakfast, she can tell you about most every book in her home, and there are hundreds, down from thousands at one point. She loved to read, but unfortunately her essential tremor keeps her from doing so today. Said tremor is her only complaint, and it’s not too bad at all, much less than she thinks it is. And she may repeat questions every so often, but I discovered that if you’re talking to her about something that stimulates her mind, something beyond the weather and how are you feeling, she is very attentive and aware of what she’s been told.
I had the chance to read her some of my trip stories. She lit up. I pulled out the old World Atlas (oooold - USSR still there!) and we spent hours looking and talking about the route to New York. And then I read her story about the Commonwealth of Virginia. (https://www.walktothepark.com/sixty-five). She listened to every word with her head down, and when I was done, she looked up with her tired old eyes, teary this time, and said “no one has ever said anything that nice about me before”. Of course, that’s not exactly true, an exaggeration perhaps, for a lot of people have said very nice things about her all her life. There’s nothing to not like about my Mom. That was my best Xmas present this year.
And speaking of presents… another cool one. We were at my brother’s house, my brother has a big family, and we started playing a presents game, going around a room with perhaps 30 people, family and friends. At the end of the giving and stealing and swapping, my two-and-a-half-year-old grand-niece (gasp) Maria opened hers, happy to find a fairly large tin of butter cookies. She was quite thrilled. However, a couple of minutes later, not sure if it was prompted by her mother or not, which doesn’t matter here, but Maria walked the perimeter of the entire room, offering her butter cookies to everyone! By the time she made it back to where she started, about five minutes later, there was one cookie left, which she ate, and that was that. I was so cool to see the innate generosity of that beautiful little person, especially in an age when most kids would have taken their cookies and ran! I hope she never loses that generosity - it was awesome, and very sweet.
So, on the eve of 2020, a new year, I wonder what it will bring. As with this past year, there are bound to be more changes, but I feel much more prepared to face them than I would have a year ago. Change is inevitable, and instead of fighting it, I’m learning to embrace and accept it - can’t change it, might as well deal with it. And I look back on 2019 - an incredible year which included my very cool walk to the park. But I don’t wait for New Year’s to do this thinking, as I probably do it most every day. Every calendar year is indeed a new year, but every day is a new one as well, so why wait for December 31st to celebrate it! I do it all the time, and am quite ho-hum about traditional New Year’s events, where you have to be happy and celebrate. I’m happy, and I celebrate all the time.
A new friend asked me a couple of days ago whether I was the type of person that made new-year’s resolutions. The answer is no. If I need to make a resolution, make a promise or make a change, I don’t wait for a specific date - I do it when I’m ready, regardless of the date upon which it falls.
This afternoon and evening, it now being New Year’s Eve, I will take a long walk, and celebrate the legs that get me around quite well, pain free, and got me to NY. I will celebrate my health, for which I am very grateful. I’m celebrating my independence and freedom. I’ll celebrate having my family and friends, though we may be apart tonight. I definitely won’t eat grapes - I don’t like stuffing grapes into my mouth, but I’ll celebrate the fact that I don’t have to tonight. I’ll watch the fireworks over Austin, for I love fireworks. And I will give thanks for all the goodness around us, and hope for peace, my own and our World’s… that’s what my New Year’s is all about.
