My
recent trip to see my prosthetist, Rob (the guy who builds and adjusts my
prosthetic leg), didn’t end as I had hoped. He tried his best but my body had
different plans! The end result is that
my knee is messed up and needs time to rest and recover, so I’m riding the
wheelchair 24/7 for a while. I’m in the
process of getting an appointment with my Physical Medicine and Rehab doctor
for evaluation and further recommendations.
Last
month I started having pain below the knee after walking a bit. I’m 600 miles away from my prosthetist, so we
do a lot over the phone. Nothing I tried
worked so I made the trip down to Newport, KY (Cincinnati metro area) to see
him in person (left home on Sunday 3/12).
My assumption was that he would get everything corrected and I would be
happily walking without pain once again.
Normally
when you have a painful area on your limb it will show up on your skin; usually
as an angry red area. My skin wasn’t
doing that so it made pinpointing the problem all that much more difficult. Rob would make an adjustment based upon what
I was describing and then I would walk to see if it would hurt again. We did that over and over and weren’t making
much progress (Rob would make an adjustment.
I would walk anywhere from ¼ mile to 1 mile and the intense pain would
hit again. We repeated this cycle over
and over). Eventually we came to realize
that the problem area was just below the patella instead of the 2-3 inches
lower where I thought I was having the pain.
By that time, my knee was pretty beat up. We couldn’t continue making any adjustments
with my knee so sensitized to pain.
And
I remembered about two and a half years ago with one of my first prosthetic
limbs that I could not tolerate the Patellar Tendon Bearing style socket and
had an MRI of my knee done. One of the things
they found was that I had a mild patella dysplasia (I think that means that my
knee cap does not work right and causes pain).
Rob made some adjustments that should help that issue but my knee hurt
too much to give it a fair evaluation.
My knee needed some recovery time out of the socket, so I headed for
home and arrive back in Fall Creek on Friday afternoon (3/17).
It
was a very trying time because there weren’t any easy answers, and the location
where I felt the pain originally was not the same area where the trauma was apparently
occurring. Finding the MRI results
helped steer us in the right direction, but it was a very long, painful process
for me. It’s difficult when you are
filled with hope (“This time it is going to work”) and instead are greeted with
intense pain again time after time. With
my past history (being stuck in a wheel chair full-time for almost a year and a
half) it became a bit of a mental battle as well (“Oh no, here we go again”).
All
I want to do is walk, do some of my favorite activities, and regain some
normalcy in my life. I hope it happens;
but I honestly don’t know if it ever will.
Deep Sigh! I went back to my
hotel on Wednesday evening somewhat defeated.
Things weren’t going well. We
didn’t really have any plan or new ideas to try. I had asked my family to pray for wisdom for
Rob and we made a little forward progress, I believe. At this point I hadn’t remembered having the
MRI done, so we were still shooting in the dark.
One
of the best things that I did is grab my phone and went to my bible app. I was going to read scripture and pray
awhile. The app I use always opens with
a verse of the day. Here is what it was
for Wednesday. Psalm 73:26 “My flesh and my heart may
fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.” (ESV). Wow!!! I needed to hear that. My body may (and may continue) to fall apart;
but God is my source of strength and will provide exactly what I need every day
for the rest of my life. It’s a reminder
to me that my joy and happiness is not centered solely in my physical and/or
adaptive abilities. If I have God, then
that is enough. That doesn’t mean that I
don’t desire them; it just means that I can live without them if I have
to. The turmoil in my heart quickly
settled into a peaceful acceptance.
After that I had a restful evening.
I found the MRI results and sent those to Rob. The next morning I easily decided that I
would head home and let the knee recover for a while.
I’ve got to say that after enjoying walking for several
months, the last thing that I want to do is sit back down and ride the
wheelchair again. But I’ve come to
realize that so much of the Amp life for me is about accepting certain limitations
after giving it my best shot. I’m hoping
that my knee recovers quickly and I can resume walking again soon. But I’m in it for the long haul and just have
to wait and see how long this current chapter of my life lasts.
