After The World’s Longest Hospitalization for a Simple Knee Replacement, my son became my cheerleader.
At 9 or 10, he already understood his mother’s need for encouragement. Years before, he had invented a silly character who pranced around the house saying, “I am an old woman. . .”. He deployed those antics whenever his mother grew despondent. I would sit over my paperwork in the breakfast nook, struggling not to cry. Patrick would stretch the back of his t-shirt over his head like a nun’s veil and begin to croon, “I am an old woman. . .”. I got the giggles every time.
The knee replacement went badly. I never made the degree of bend that the doctor demanded before discharge. Seven weeks after the surgery, he finally released me from the hospital, ruling that I had come as close as I ever would. I went home to a wheelchair-bound husband and a serious, thoughtful fourth-grade son, hopeful that all would be well. A day later, my husband got crushed by his wheelchair lift and my hopes shattered on impact.
My recuperation took a back seat as we struggled to make sense of what had happened to Dennis. His employer, Sprint, came through for us in many ways: Visits to the hospital; catered meals; approval of long-term disability as he tried to recover from the hypoxemic episodes which nearly killed him. Meanwhile, I faced the challenge of learning to reciprocate stair-walk with a knee that refused to cooperate and spastic legs that loathed the metal now housed within them. I had never been great at stairs. I took them slowly, first one foot, then the other slid beside it. But to make the knee work, I had to bring each foot to the step above, challenging enough for spastic legs but doubly so learning to use a recalcitrant replacement joint inside resentful muscles.
Everywhere that my son and I went, he would cajole me into taking the stairs “the right way”, reciprocating, as he knew I was supposed to do. He praised every clumsy effort. I kept trying, inspired by his encouragement, not wanting to let him down. Eventually, I could do it without more effort than I was willing to expand. My physical therapist cheered. I satisfied the last tick in her box and she, too, discharged me to continue with my normal life.
This morning, as I climbed the stairs to the gorgeous wood-clad room which sold this house to me twenty-three years ago, I remembered the agony of the hours which I spent in therapy, trying to force my right leg to behave. A recent visitor asked me, How can you climb these stairs every day? Why isn’t your bedroom on the first floor? I looked around the beautiful haven of my bedroom with its cathedral ceiling, the rocking chair, my wooden thrift-store desk, and my new beautiful bathroom. I smiled. I can’t make sense of it for someone not living inside my soul. I answered as well as I could: I climb those stairs because I can.
It’s the ninth day of the twenty-ninth month of My Year Without Complaining. Life continues.
Lovely post!