In this day and age, you can take action and try to get any orthopedic issue fixed if you want to and you have the means. When she got to be 80, my mom finally decided she didn't like being so disabled with her bad knees and she got herself all ready and she had both knees replaced successfully. I think that all of her siblings have at least one new knee. Last fall Lani finally got to the point where she realized she was too hampered by her knees and she managed to get both of them replaced before the covid lockdown happened. Both of them are very glad they did it. Lani turned into a born-again knee surgery salesperson within 24 hours of her first replacement.
So I know, and everyone tells me this all the time, I can fix this. Maybe five years ago I had to give up walking for exercise, after giving up running before that. And when we think back to our winter trips in recent years, I have been walking less and less. Eventually it will be really clear that I am totally disabled and I will have to make the decision. I am hobbling (Rebecca calls it waddling, and she is right). Up until this pandemic, I had a good thing going with the swimming pool and the acupuncture. Without those two supports, I have really aged. My knees hurt more than they used to, for sure. And now I will wait until the medical world is clear of bigger emergencies before I think some more about this impending downtime.
I think about the people I have known who may not have had the options we have now, and how they moved through the world. There was a wholesale customer named Sam Stalcup with one leg much shorter than the other and who walked with a cane. By the time we knew him, he was probably in his 60s. He could drive, he could get out of his truck, he could direct other people, and he seemed like a relatively happy person. He may have had that short leg all his life and his hip probably hurt all the time but he definitely lived a full life. There was Darryl who ran cross country for Penn State and then for the Marines and then just for the love of it. He used up all the cartilage in his ankles and he was hobbling by the time he was in his 60s. Hobbling and swearing and grimacing from the pain with almost every step. But he said he would not have changed anything about his running life. He would do it all again, just the same. He got a lot of happy miles out of those feet and ankles before they broke down. I see my neighbor who has been a runner all his life, grappling now with the consequences of all that happy athleticism. It is a big mental and emotional shift, to learn to live with a less-able body.
I also got a lot of joy out of racquetball and running, dancing and picking corn. In my dreams, I walk like a normal person and sometimes I even notice that. I stop to think, hey, look, I'm walking! The time will come when I decide that these limitations are more than I want to deal with, and luckily I live in a world of health care privilege. I do have a choice. I just can't quite make that choice right now and it doesn't make me sad.
There are a few upsides to this lack of mobility. I am also now in my 60s and up until very recently I did a lot of physical work. Now I do almost nothing that hurts my body. I may pick lettuce or chard or parsley, but not for very long. I only mulch enough to show someone else how to do it. The days of carrying heavy bales across an uneven field are over for me. I miss being that person but I have so much other stuff to do. Since I can't do all that real work, I have devoted myself to making this farm run better without my body doing the work. Now it would take a lot of managerial wizardry to find enough hours in the day for me to be in the field. In truth, there still aren't enough hours in the day. How did I ever have time to do all that work?
I am very conscious that other people have opinions about my limping around. Everyone thinks I should get my knees replaced. Everyone thinks I should lose weight. Everyone thinks I should take a day off. Everyone is right about all of it. I don't have a single argument with any of those correct opinions. But I also am living a full and happy life, if you can believe it. I have a golf cart, I have lots of comfortable places to sit, I am busier than I ever remember, and I sleep well at night. When those supports start to collapse, I will take action. I will not lie on the couch all day eating bonbons. I will do what I need to do. I promise. I just hate the idea of being taken out of commission for so long. Lani says I will know when I have hit that wall. She had the same attitude that I have -- too much to do, too little time, this is fine for now. And then all of a sudden it wasn't fine anymore. I expect that time may come sooner than I realize, but I sure don't want to mess with the hospital right this minute.
At 5:55 this morning, I was driving around this beautiful Loudoun farm, looking at all the fields. On the far side of the garlic patch, maybe 500 yards from where I am now, I ran out of gas. I was barefoot. I walked back to the Green Barn. I didn't need to call for an Uber, I just walked slowly back. If it ever happens that I run out of gas on the other side of the farm and I cannot get myself back on my own two feet, that will be a clear sign that the time has come.
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