Part of caring for myself involves trying to do something about my failing parts.

One of the things I inherited was a propensity towards arthritis. Now I have been experiencing problems with my knee for the past several years. Pain, functionality issues. Trouble walking. I used to be a trail runner to put this in perspective.

Well, after years of treatments, I finally got a diagnosis for the cause of the problem. Yes it is the arthritis. But it is in my HIP, not my knee.

It seems that an injury involving falling through a ceiling and smacking my hip on a joist was the root cause of a badly impacted hip joint. I was originally treated for, not the pain in my hip that I went to the OR about. But rather the ankle I had fractured.

Fast forward several years and I finally get an x-ray of the hip done; and low and behold, the hip is all but immobilized. I thought it was ,my knee that made it all but impossible to put on socks in the morning.

So after a lot of procrastination, I have scheduled my self for a total hip replacement. By going bionic, I have a good chance of restoring my functionality and stopping the unremitting pain in my knee at last.

It will be painful and take time to heal. But maybe, just maybe, I will be able to start walking again.

Take care of yourself. It requires caring enough about YOU to realize it is not just you that hurts. It is the loved ones around you that have to experience vicariously what you deal with every day.

It’s not fair to THEM if you don’t take care and fix that which you can.

So in this case, caring about myself involves caring enough to try to fix the problem. 9 months ago