Sunday, August 11
First, this happened. On Tuesday, late afternoon, I went to PT with Karen at Blue Sky, and then to Pilates class. Pilates! Karen was careful to make sure that I wasn’t tweaking my knee in a bad way, and yet, for the most part, I was able to do everything that the class did. What a joy! What a workout! I finished the class with visions of that very wonderful muscle soreness that I expected to hit Wednesday afternoon.
But Wednesday afternoon brought only a small amount of aching muscles. What luck! Maybe I have not lost as much fitness as I thought. Then on Wednesday night, we had dinner and drinks with our friends Debbie and Tom. They came to our house; we had champagne on Mayberry, our front porch; we walked over to the Pioneer, our local college Mexican food go-to place. This get together was a very late celebration of their wedding, which happened more than a year ago. (Why rush things?) It was a lovely evening: nice enough to sit outside, not so hot that you needed to be under a mister. We walked back home. And here’s what happened: I walked both ways, no big deal. And from moment to moment, I thought about things that were not related to my bionic knee.
And - wonder of wonders: I slept. I mean, slept all night long, something that had not happened since sometime back in May. It was glorious. It was ever so odd, waking up Thursday morning, well rested, and without thoughts of how much my knee hurt. Well, of course it hurt: it always does, at least a little. But there are moments - and now an entire night! - when other things enter my brain before the pain signals.
And then this happened: on Thursday night, my niece Annie and her friend Jess arrived from Iowa for their own little getaway. On Friday morning, bright and early, we walked to Jelly’s, our favorite local breakfast place. And here’s the thing: we walked at a brisk pace (for me, anyway, in my go-slow phase), had breakfast, and then we walked back home. Both ways. Not always thinking about my bionic knee. Talking about things that are not my bionic knee.
And then this happened: The Rolling Stones at Mile High Stadium on Saturday night. Back when the Stones announced this tour, Ed and I had a chat about it. He said, “well, wouldn’t that be cool to see the Stones, but the tickets must be outrageous. We’re not doing that.” To which I responded: “What you mean ‘we’, Kemosabe?” I told him that this might well be the last chance ever to see this band, and well, I was going at any cost. Ed said, “you’re not going without me!”, which explains how we (along with my concert-buddy Denise) ended up with tickets for the Stones for their May 25 date in Denver.
We bought these tickets in November 2018, long before my knee completely went whacko back at the beginning of February this year. On February 22, I had a cortisone shot in my knee, never thinking it would have anything at all to do with the upcoming concert. But when that shot didn’t magically make my knee better (as cortisone shots had done in the past), we started down the path to the Total Knee Replacement. One of the first caveats we learned while going through the process of choosing a surgeon and scheduling the procedure was that most surgeons advocate against having the TKR within three months of any cortisone shots. That all meant that the earliest I could schedule the surgery would have been May 22. Despite the fact that once I decided to have the surgery I wanted to get it done as quickly as possible, there was no way I was going to forfeit those Stones tickets and that experience. We decided that when it came time to schedule the procedure with a surgeon, we would target later in May, and just pray that I would be able to walk well enough pre-surgery to enjoy the concert.
Then Mick Jagger went in for heart valve replacement surgery in April, and the concert was postponed. I was bummed about that - mostly due to fear that the concert might never actually happen. But on the other hand, it freed me up to schedule my surgery as soon as the medical folks would allow. That meant I chose the very first available day, May 23.
On May 16, the Stones announced the new concert date: August 10. By my calculations, that meant just over eleven weeks post-surgery. Easy-peasy! This was working out to be ideal.
Until. Until the tendonitis. And the doing-abso-freaking-lutely-nothing for three weeks. And starting recovery from scratch six weeks after surgery. Then the bursitis. And the spiral down the rabbit hole from all that malarkey. When I could manage to think about the future at all, it was hard to picture a time when I would ever be mobile again. I started to doubt ever being able to do anything again - let it be biking, or hiking, or skiing, or running, or something so seemingly simple as going to a concert.
But then, something happened. There was a curve in the road, a corner, a bend. Somehow, magically, slowly, bit by bit, this knee - no, this entire leg - has started to heal. And with it, my psyche, too. Which means that when it came time to head out to see the Stones, there was no question of whether I could handle the travel, the walking, the being on my feet for hours. Because: healing. Because: becoming whole again. Because: something happened, and there I was, taking the light rail to Mile High Stadium, finding our seats - right there! - and stashing our blanket there, finding the vendor to buy a t-shirt, and then finding a vendor to buy our beers. And there I was, standing and singing and yelling and dancing and maybe not exactly jumping up and down, but there I was. Moments in time when my bionic knee was not my focus, not the entirety of my attention. My mind was elsewhere, on more important things, on the music that defines my generation, that makes me smile and want to dance and want to move. Moments of watching these septuagenarians - Mick and Keith and Ronnie and Charlie - on stage, rock-and-rollers until they drop, making me aware of how precious - and how joyful - it is to do what you love in life.
Moments when I thought about the things I love in life. Moments when I didn’t think about my knee at all.
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