Pain
This last week has been a rough one; for quite a while now my right knee has been degenerating to the point where the meniscus has broken down to the point the knee joint is bone-on-bone. Some 30 years back, the same knee had an ACL replacement and this is ‘normal’ after such a time.
The weather always affects the damn thing and this last week was no exception. In the Carolinas the temps were below freezing every morning this last week and that means increased discomfort. Not pain per se, but an achy enlarged feeling that makes positioning the knee as I sit at my work desk problematic. On top of which, it makes sleep difficult, as you might imagine. Further, even asleep, my body moves to a comfortable knee position which does a number on my lower back. After a week of this…I’m certain you can imagine.
It is mostly the back that began the bad nights of sleep. The temperature always got into at least the 50s all week at the height of the day, so the knee became more comfortable, even if by only degrees. As the week went on, both back and knee conspired to keep me awake into the Wee Hours each night. I get up at 4:30am every day for work, so you can see how this made for some:
Suffering
So, on top of this discomfort, though not as stringent at this earlier time, the end of January through just last week as of this writing, my parents, who are 84, had health issues that basically put most of the chores and cleaning and such on me. This, other than the stress on the body, is as nothing, as they are the main reason I moved to the East Coast from Alaska. But, damn is it hard to watch them suffer with either recovery after heart surgery or the ‘fun’ that comes with a UTI. Not only for the sufferer but in the need to help drain a catheter bag on a regular basis, or when the cath bag springs a leak and so forth. It was stressful, of course, and I am please that my drinking did not increase! Not that there was a lot of drinking to begin with!
They are both through the recovery and infection and things are less stressful and such. It has been hell to bring in all the provisions after my mother and I do the shopping on Fridays, at least more and more as the knee deteriorates and if, as this last week, my back is in bad shape along with the knee. But it gets done and I’ve learned, as I have a few times before, to turn all of these things into:
Growth
Let’s face it, if only we are open to the opportunity all experiences, good or bad, are chances to grow. I try, and fail at times, to let all I see and do and have happen to me, to do this. I am human, and there are idiocies that will always just piss me off, but even through that I hope to temper the temper. Unfortunately, too many people today, People of the Sound Bite and No Attention Span (PSBNAS) do not use their brains and logic and their first impulse with anything they disagree with is to ATTACK, to block, to ‘defriend’ but not to engage in enlightening conversation.
This is a digression, however, but it does give me an opportunity to express some wisdom I have been learning about how to deal with anger, and I will simply leave a few quotes (I have not yet read) that fit:
In these simply things, however, I make an attempt at growth.
Back to it before I started rambling: I’ve lost a brother to cancer and also had to see how it effected my parents; if been mentally and physically misused by women I thought were as in love with me as I was with them and suffered too many heartbreaks; there are other things as well, of course, but through all of these things and others, though it surely was hard-won, I have allowed myself to grow. Through this growth I believe I have become a better person, though of course I am human and make silly mistakes and even fall back on ways BG or Before Growth. Yet, those are learning opportunities, as well, yes?
Even what I do here by blogging always helps at times to write things out and get it either out of my system or get my thoughts straight on a subject, sometimes going off on a tangent as you read just a paragraph or so ago. 🤷♂️
At any rate this was just a quick (?) update on Life in the Bradicombs. It is my hope this finds you who read this well. I bid you Peace.
