So, I have two knees. You’re probably the same. In recent years I have known them individually as MGK & MDK. (My good knee and my dodgy knee). I had kind of gotten used to doing life with one dodgy knee. You just adapt basic things like, “how do I get out of this low chair” or “adjusting your gate as you traverse the byways”, or my personal favourite “I just need to sit for 10 minutes”. That’s always a good solution when your body is giving you painful messages. Things being as they were, life rolled along and me and my dodgy knee had an understanding that we would listen to each other and respond accordingly.
Meanwhile, the good knee had unsuspectingly become jealous of all the attention the bad knee was getting. In a bloodless coup one night, on yet another road trip back from Sydney, my good knee decided to withdraw its services and remind me that it had needs (kneeds 🙂 ) too. (see what I did there??) Upping the stakes a little MGK decided to tear the miniscus leaving me in pain, unable to walk properly, and having to renegotiate how I got out of any chair, not just the low ones. If there was any upside to this injury it could be that I now had a gate similar to Charlie Chaplin walking on coals. This could come in handy should there be a need for a Chaplin impersonator but alas, no such need has presented itself.
It’s a curious thing when your body gives you the stop signal. You can choose to ignore it and throw the dice as to how that will go. Or you can simply acknowledge that this next portion of time will be filled with doctors, physio, workcover appointments, constant evaluation of chair heights, and lots of sitting around while your body performs all tasks necessary to recuperation. Add to that the stress of not being able to earn money for some 5 weeks now, with workcover dragging their chain on the processes at hand, you find yourself reciting the mantra “I want to get back to work, I can’t get back to work”.
Sitting still is not altogether a bad thing. When you stop, you don’t focus on the busy-ness. You are more inclined to contemplate all that is going past your stillness. I remember doing a series of camps as a teenager that were titles “Stillpoint”, the focus being becoming still in a busy world. These weeks/weekends had a large formative impact on me, equipping me with tools that still serve me to this day. Every now and then I am reminded of these tools and the value of this practise through circumstances I find myself in. A few years ago it was a speaker who proclaimed that he encouraged his staff to spend time each day just staring out the window. At the moment it is a good knee gone bad.
Whatever the causal factor, I will try not to waste the opportunity, to stop, be still, think, dream, create and eventually get up (out of this low chair) and move on. I’m thinking as I write this of my sister Annie, my friends Dave and Woody and all others who occupy a similar space, not through their own choosing
Footnote: (No pun intended). Turns out it wasn’t a meniscus tear but something more serious and more permanent requiring a total knee replacement as the only viable solution.
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