I was hobnobbing with folks during coffee hour after services at my hippy-groovy Unitarian Universalist church this morning when one of my fellow church members flags me down and asks: "Hey, so you're totally doing without your cane now? How is that happening?"
Heh. I almost forgot that people who know me are still catching up with the fact that I'm not using a cane much anymore. I still keep it in the car, because sometimes at the end of a day of shopping or whatever, the muscles around my left knee get fatigued and need a little support. And sometimes I use it the day after I've overdone things and the knee is letting me know it feels a bit unstable.
But otherwise I'm pretty much free of it. And the more I walk around without it, the more my endurance increases, as well as the strength of those key muscles around the knee that keep the joint aligned and supported.
The little meniscus tear is still in there, and still occasionally starts clicking and attempting to lock the knee. But it's doing it less and less. I can't help thinking that the way I was walking with the cane, which inevitably throws one's body out of alignment, was exacerbating the meniscus tear. Now that I'm using the cane less and less, my body and thus my knee are in more normal alignment, so it's plausible that this is putting less stress on that little wedge of cartilege in there so that it doesn't get all irritated and inflamed as often.
It's too easy for me to take this change for granted, but it really is
a big huge deal--and it's a direct consequence of having taken off all
that weight that was slowly but surely pulverizing that knee to bits. So--hurray for me! And hurray for friends who spontaneously notice such things! Hey, I'm not proud, I'll happily take all the ego-strokes I can get.
Hi mizducky - I for one, felt really great for you.....seeing you getting around without the cane. I didn't know if I should have mentioned it or not. But we're so proud of you, what a nice milestone!
Posted by: Kirk | March 17, 2008 at 11:47 AM