I just came in from my "brrrrrrrr" 7 mile, 13 min/mile (admittedly
shameless bragging) walk this brisk 28 degree morning. My left knee is
aching. I'm afraid it's starting to act up again after a two month hiatus. It
suddenly had started hurting beyond its usual annoying chronic ache last
February. "Killing me" is a better term, but I had lived with it and had kept
on slowly building up my walking distance and pace. Loved that ibuprofen I was
secretly taking so my in-house boss wouldn't know. Then, one day in August, in
San Mateo, I started giving out what I thought were silent groans when it got
to the point I couldn't painlessly bend my left knee when I tried to get
dressed or sit down, even though I could walk almost pain free. My ever
vigilant Susie saw my winces, put her foot down, and pulled my feet off the
streets. Immediately, after getting home two weeks later, kicking and
screaming, to get her off my back, I agreed to go into the orthopedic surgeon
who had worked on her rotator cuff. He looked at the x-rays.
"Ever play lacrosse or soccer in high school or college?" he asked.
After I nodded my head. "You're left-footed," he added.
Another affirming nod.
He showed me the x-ray, pointing, describing, explaining, "You have an
'athletic knee.' It's taken a lot of trauma."
"Now?" I asked myself. "Just from running, kicking, stop-going,
twisting, and turning when I played soccer in college over a half century ago?"
I thought to myself. Then, I remembered the neurosurgeon explaining that my
massive cerebral hemorrhage that hit me in six years ago may have been caused
by a cracked skull and severe concussion from a soccer game forty-seven years
earlier. With sincere disbelief, I told the orthopedist that my knee had never
bothered me before beyond an ache. He replied with a sarcastic smile, "It does
now." Thankfully, he isn't one of those surgeons who greets you with a scalpel
when you come into his office. So, he shot the knee up with cortisone and put
me on Celebrex. It worked. I kept walking. Only for a while.
Now, I like where my exercise level is: walking every other day,
working out with dumbbells on the non-walking days. I've worked hard over the
last six months to get to the 7 mile, 13 minute/mile level that I'm at. But, I
over the past six weeks, under the scrutiny of my live-in drill sergeant, with
a reluctant, but submissive, "yes ma'am," have reduced my walking schedule from
every day to two days on and one day off, and last week to every other day. I
convinced myself that at my age, I didn't need to push myself to such level.
Who was I trying to kid? That wasn't the real reason. My knee had started
bothering me again, now and then. Increasingly more now than then. I made the
mistake of telling Susie that maybe the effects of the cortisone were wearing
off and the Celebrex wasn't picking up the slack. She immediately got me to
pick up the phone and had me get in to see orthopedist this afternoon. I've
got a hunch an MRI is on the horizon, maybe an arthroscopic procedure. I doubt
he'll shoot it up again. I'm not a happy camper. It'll take me off the
dawning streets for a while. But Susie is right and I am wrong.
Right now, I'm in a state of comfortable discomfort. Sounds like a
contradiction in terms, doesn't it. Well, there's a lesson here for all of us.
Sometimes to avoid risk we bed down with pain and make it annoying or achy or
gnawing, don't we. Sometimes to play it safe we make fear so friendly that it
doesn't feel like fear, don't we. Sometimes to avoid difficulty we walk
hand-in-hand with discomfort so that it doesn't seem to be all that
uncomfortable, don't we. Sometimes to avoid picking up a gauntlet of
challenge, we accept unacceptable pain, don't we. Sometimes when we don't want
to make any change fear becomes a friendly shield, doesn't it. Sometimes when
we don't want to bother or be bothered we hold hands with the bothersome, don't
we. That's what it's really a lot it is about when we and students anxiously
say, argue, explain, rationalize, resist with "It's not me," "It's hard," "It's
not my teaching (learning) style," "I'm not good at," "I don't like?"
You know, it's okay to antsy, nervous, anxious, afraid. It's not a
weakness to get sweaty palms or weakened legs. As I have told students, it's
okay to have fear, but learn not to let the fear have you. Courage is not the
absence of fear. It's learning from, adapting to, and dealing with. It is
acting in the face of fear, to learn from fear, to be energized by fear, and
use all that to move through fear. So, I guess I'll just have to courageously
face this afternoon whatever the orthopedist says both fearfully and fearlessly
with a "let's see what happens" as I have done with anything new technique and
technology that I have experimented with in the classroom.
Make it a good day
-Louis-
Louis Schmier
http://www.therandomthoughts.edublogs.org
203 E. Brookwood Pl http://www.therandomthoughts.com
Valdosta, Ga 31602
(C) 229-630-0821 /\ /\ /\ /\
/\
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/ \ / \
/ \/ \_ \/ / \/
/\/ / \ /\ \
//\/\/ /\ \__/__/_/\_\/
\_/__\ \
/\"If you want to climb
mountains,\ /\
_ / \ don't practice on mole
hills" - / \_
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