The Crazy Merri-go-Round Ride of Disability

 The ride that is disability. I was diagnosed with menopausal osteo-arthritis in my knees. My life changed drastically in what seems like a few days. I was walking 5 miles a day, three or four times a week and suddenly my knees were giving me pain and they were swollen and I felt crippled. I was very quickly only able to do my daily walking required by my job. Which wasn't nothing, but the walking for my health after work came to grinding halt. The following school year, with the help of steroid injections I was barely able to do the required walking that goes with teaching. I decided not to teach the following year. And I was able to get a job, one I was probably not as able to carry out as I implied when I was hired, but I got a job nonetheless. Through unrelated circumstances though, I was forced to abandon this job for the sake of my family. Now, however, my knees were bad enough that I couldn't fool my way into another job. So I filed for disability and fought for an agonizingly long 15 months to get approved. During this time, I burned through my KPERS (my retirement), and relied on the kindness of others to pay my Electric bill every month. I learned that it's possible to live on nothing. Fortunately, my house was paid for, I was only neglecting my taxes and home owners insurance. 

During this unsettled time, I had both of my knees replaced. Total knee replacement surgery first in the left knee and then six months later, in the right knee. The right has always been the easy one. It healed fast, it has better flexibility and mobility range. The left one I've fallen on twice. It swells, it gets tight, it is hard to lift my left leg without pain. I am, to my dismay, disabled. A fall risk. 

Some days are better than others, but the truth is, it's a merri-go-round ride. It will come around to the pain and swelling again without a doubt. I find myself once again in physical therapy. My therapist is a miracle worker and simply amazing. I must admit that. But here's what I'm seeing.... 

When I work too hard in pt, I have pain and swelling, making me inactive and sitting around with hot packs on my knees and this crazy nerve on the left side that sends pain pulsing down my hip, thigh, knee, calf to my ankle. But being less active flairs the pain again, making me less flexible, less adapted to a life resembling normalcy, and more likely to sit, sit, sit. Which in turn increases my fall risk, my inability to gain more flexibility and long-term mobility. I feel trapped in a very real, very unnerving (har-har) cycle. More movement = more swelling, pain, and "tightness." More tightness and pain = less movement. Less movement makes it so that when I do stretch, do PT exercises, work to strengthen and lengthen, I face soreness, tightness, and swelling. Forcing me to slow down again. Making me admit, that in this moment, I am, truly, disabled. I may not be forever, that is my hope, my prayer. But my current status not just a title, but reality.

See the cycle. It drives my mind into insanity, thinking perhaps I'll never be able to return to my passion... teaching. Will I be strong enough to maybe substitute teach a couple times a week? Currently this is my prayer. But I have these hopes and aspirations that I'll be able to teach full time again. That one day I'll have the strength and stamina to submerge myself into the chaos that is teaching again. But for now, I keep riding the merri-go-round. I keep fighting the pain and swelling. I keep hoping. Keep going with the ebb and flow that is disability.