Update:
I spent the morning emailing back and forth with my prosthetist. She asked me lots of clarifying questions concerning
the pain I was experiencing, most of which I wasn’t certain how to answer
her. If you don’t really know too much
about car repair, have you ever tried to explain to a mechanic the noise you
are hearing? It is kind of like that for
me and the leg. Leah wanted me to wait
until next week to come in and in the meantime to pay close attention to what
was happening with my leg if I encountered any more pain. Sounds easy enough.
I got to the office just after 10:30 a.m. and in less than an hour, the
severe pain had returned. I emailed Leah
to let her know what was happening and she asked me to come in to the lab just
after lunch. I painfully limped out to
the truck and then into my house where I promptly got into the wheelchair. I ate lunch and then headed into Eau
Claire.
Getting the wheelchair loaded caused me to run a little behind and
wouldn’t you know it, I got behind someone who thought 5-10 MPH under the speed
limit was the perfect way to travel on such a lovely day. The traffic lights conspired against me as
well making certain that I stopped at almost everyone. I was going to be late for the appointment that
Leah squeezed me into. I was getting frustrated
and anxious and fussing at the driver slowly leaving the light and taking forever
to get up to speed. I’ve been reading
“Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff… and everything is small stuff” by Richard Carlson
and decided to apply what I read while I was sitting at the next red light. I chose to let all my frustration go and
realize that a few minutes late really wasn’t going to matter. I had just let it all go when the light
finally turned green. The car in front
of me was slow about getting moving again and the car behind me angrily blew
his horn about 8 times in rapid succession.
I just laughed to myself, “See that is exactly the kind of attitude that
I wanted to avoid creating in myself.
That guy needs to chillax.” I
ended up at my appointment a little over five minutes late; but Leah was
running behind and she wasn’t ready for me for another 20 minutes anyway. There was no need to get emotionally all
worked up and rush like crazy. Glad I
calmed down and enjoyed the last five minutes of my drive!
My appointment stretched to over 90 minutes as we sought to discover the
cause of my pain. I was glad that my
knee was acting up while I was with her so she could help me figure out what
exactly was going on. I was getting a
terrible pop near the tendon below the knee cap. Leah discovered that my prosthesis was loose
from front to back and adding a thick pad seemed to take care of that
problem. Then I started getting a tendon
or muscle snapping over the lower part of the fibula. OUCH!
She added another pad next to my tibia and that seemed to take care of
the problem. It was pretty amazing that
moving the pad 1/8 inch in either direction did nothing or relieved the
pain. I left her office feeling good
about the prosthesis. But I was a bit
nauseated by the pain of having to walk on my leg to get it to pop and snap
over and over during the discovery phase of the exam.
I had one incident a couple of hours later. This time I could tell that the pain was from
that tendon snapping over the fibula. I
added another ply of sock and that took care of the problem. Other than that, the rest of the evening went
fine with my leg. Leah suggested that I
keep my wheelchair close at hand this weekend in case something else flared
up. I’m glad that we finally solved two
problems that I’ve been having.
Hopefully no new ones will rear their head for the next couple of weeks.
While all this was going on my computer at the office decided to take
the day off too. I had to call in my
tech support guy who finally figured out that my user profile was corrupted and
that’s why all my programs and files disappeared on me. He was able to recover my files and get me
back in business temporarily. While we
were working on that the phone service went out. We are getting ready to add a couple of small
additions onto the church. The phone
company had to reroute our lines and decided to lay a temporary line on top of
the ground. Laying in the grass, the
thin black cable is almost impossible to see.
The guy mowing the lawn didn’t see it until after the damage was
done. That took some time to find all
the bad spots and get us back in service.
What a crazy mixed up kind of day!
Here I thought that I would get to the church a little early and get
lots done. Ha! Ha!
The joke was on me. Tomorrow has
to go more smoothly right?
Thought for the Day:
Helen Keller wrote: “We belong to the largest company in all the world—the
company of those who have known suffering….So long as you can sweeten another’s
pain, life is not in vain.”
2 Corinthians 1:3-4; 8-11 “Blessed
be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God
of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort
those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are
comforted by God….For we do not want you to be unaware, brothers, of the
affliction we experienced in Asia. For we were so utterly burdened beyond our
strength that we despaired of life itself. Indeed, we felt that we had received the sentence of death. But that was to
make us rely not on ourselves but on God who raises the dead. He delivered us from such a deadly peril, and he will deliver us. On him we
have set our hope that he will deliver us again. You also must help us by prayer, so that many will give thanks on our
behalf for the blessing granted us through the prayers of many.”
Out of his
experience, “Paul gained a greater sensitivity to the pains of others, and he
found himself better able to comfort them.
He learned to shun self-pity and to look for opportunities to help
somebody else who was in need. He tried
to practice what he wrote in Romans 12:15, ‘Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn
with those who mourn.’”
Job’s comforters
are well known as friends who came to help; but ended up hurting more than
helping.
“Their first
mistake was that they reacted to Job’s words instead of responding to Job’s
feelings. Here was a man devastated by
trouble, and they started an argument with him!
Why? Because they were listening with the ears and not with the heart.”
“There’s a reason
why Job’s friends were on the defensive: Job was a threat to them. These three men had their theology neatly
packaged, and this gave them a feeling of security. But Job’s experience not only unwrapped their
neat package; it scattered the contents all over the ground! They could not explain why a godly man should
suffer, and this meant that what happened to Job might happen to them!”
This leads to the
second mistake Job’s friends made: they explained instead of encouraged… People
who suffer do ask questions, but they are not always looking for answers. They are trying to find out if you and I are
the kind of friends who will let them ask questions and not criticize them… By
caring for others, we show that God cares… When we listen, we’re assuring
others that God is listening. When we
share His comfort, we are helping them to grow in their own personal relationship
with God.”
“No two experiences
are exactly alike. In fact, one of the
worst things we can do is to compare experiences with others, because it can
end in subtle competition. People who
hurt don’t really believe that anybody else has felt exactly what they
feel. The best thing to do in comforting
others is just to focus on God, the God of all comfort… We must be channels of
God’s comfort to help people have the courage to face life honestly, the wisdom
to understand what to do, the strength to do it, and the faith and hope to wait
for God to do the rest.”
“People with
threadbare clichés only deepen our wounds instead of soothing them. Clichés like: ‘Things could be worse,’ they
tell us. Could they? They seem pretty
bad right now. ‘Other people have it
worse than you do!’ Do they? How do you know?
Anyway, should it make me feel better to know that others have it worse
than I do? ‘Just think of the wonderful memories you have!’ Have you ever tried
to live on memories? Sometimes my past
joys only magnify my present pain.”
“God’s promises are
medicine for the broken heart. Let Him
comfort you. And, after He has comforted
you, try to share that comfort with somebody else. It will do both of you good.”
All of the above
quotes are from [Warren Wiersbe, Looking Up When Life Gets You Down]. I couldn’t have said it better, so I let him
just say it.
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