Kneed
Essay 12, Finite
by gayla mills
I don't remember what the cars were doing as I lay there on the side of the road, my knee crying for attention. I don't remember how I managed to get up, to get the motorcycle with the broken front brake to the shop, to get myself to the doctor. What I do remember is how many times I tried to play soccer that summer with my bum knee. How many times I had to be carried off the field, because I wouldn't stop until it gave out on me and I fell down, unable to walk, as I did every game. Were there no responsible people in my life to tell me how stupid this was, that I should just rest and let it heal, for God's sake? Or was I just not listening?
That summer I was nineteen, in love so bad it was hard to think of anything else, back from my first year at college. It was also the
summer when I began my long struggle with my right knee, the part of my body that would be torn, cut, reconnected, prodded and pulled, screwed and iced. It is the knee that has carried me to hospitals and x-rays, to three surgeries and six months of rehab and thirty years of trouble. I've cried more tears over that knee, felt more pain, and fretted more fears, than I have for any other body part. I've never worried that my heart would give out, or that my brain would fail, though they both will. It's that bad knee that's my trouble, like some
brilliant child who can't keep still and keeps poking me to ask questions, to make demands, to beg for help.
During my college years I found out the names doctors attached to my troublesome child. I learned that I'd torn the anterior cruciate
ligament when my bike fell. I learned that I tore my medial meniscus during my three years of Tai Kwon Do. I tore my posterior cruciate too. During my first surgery they took some of my kneecap. During my second they took part of my medial collateral ligament to reconstruct my ACL. Now age is taking some of my cartilage too, as things wear down between the bones. What's strange is that when I look down at it, besides a few scars and a bump where one screw is embedded, it looks pretty normal. Whole. Who would guess just how much of that knee is
missing, how little is left to do all the things I demand of it.
When I was twenty six, after spending a year limping and recovering from my third surgery, my newly minted husband told me I'd become a slow moving person. He said it from kindness, to get me motivated, but it still hurt. Since I was seven or eight years old, I don't think a month had passed in my life when I wasn't riding my bike, cutting through the air and smelling the wind as I flew. I broke an arm speed roller-skating when I was ten. I played soccer in high school, mostly on a guy's team, because I didn't know any better. I didn't know I was too slow, too short. I just loved to play. As I did while a freshman in college, though all the other girls were faster and better prepared. I even jogged and lifted weights. I never thought of myself as an athlete or any good at sports. I wasn't particularly. But I did think of myself as energetic, healthy, alive.
And now he was saying I was slow moving? It was true. If you get used to favoring a leg and moving slowly, you become that way. Just as I find that when I get used to eating junk food, it's all I crave. Or if I start thinking about one disaster that might happen, I can't stop other fears from taking over. My habits of moving, thinking, and feeling twist around me, binding my limbs and pulling me downward.
I was determined not to be slow moving—so I practiced moving more quickly. Sure enough, it wasn't many more months before I was back to normal. And I wanted to keep it that way. It was tempting to slip back toward doing the things I loved—joining a soccer team, testing for the black belt I was two weeks from earning, playing tennis for fun. But I cared about being active in my later years too—I saw myself as connected to that old person I would become. So I resigned myself to giving up some of the things I loved. No more twisting sports, no more soccer, karate, or softball, no more contact or team sports. What did that leave? Straight-ahead moves. So I took up running, swimming, cycling, weight lifting. When I turned thirty eight I did my first triathlon, one of five so far.
In one sense, my knee has been one of my greatest accomplishments—it's given me a chance to face an obstacle, to accept my limitations and push myself within them, to identify with others facing similar troubles.
But that knee is always an alien presence. I never know if I'll have a good day or a bad one, a pain-free month or one where I'm back on crutches with an ice pack and an ace wrap. I never know when I'll be attacked from within. I don't know if I'll be able to do the long bike trip I’m planning in December. Or whether I'll be able to walk down to the corner this afternoon. Last night I only made it halfway down the stairs before it gave out and I needed help. And so I am vulnerable. Anything could happen. Or is it that my knee is simply trying to tell me something that I should've known in the first place? That of course we're all vulnerable, all the time, whether we recognize it or not. Borrowed bodies, borrowed time.
Next
That summer I was nineteen, in love so bad it was hard to think of anything else, back from my first year at college. It was also the
summer when I began my long struggle with my right knee, the part of my body that would be torn, cut, reconnected, prodded and pulled, screwed and iced. It is the knee that has carried me to hospitals and x-rays, to three surgeries and six months of rehab and thirty years of trouble. I've cried more tears over that knee, felt more pain, and fretted more fears, than I have for any other body part. I've never worried that my heart would give out, or that my brain would fail, though they both will. It's that bad knee that's my trouble, like some
brilliant child who can't keep still and keeps poking me to ask questions, to make demands, to beg for help.
During my college years I found out the names doctors attached to my troublesome child. I learned that I'd torn the anterior cruciate
ligament when my bike fell. I learned that I tore my medial meniscus during my three years of Tai Kwon Do. I tore my posterior cruciate too. During my first surgery they took some of my kneecap. During my second they took part of my medial collateral ligament to reconstruct my ACL. Now age is taking some of my cartilage too, as things wear down between the bones. What's strange is that when I look down at it, besides a few scars and a bump where one screw is embedded, it looks pretty normal. Whole. Who would guess just how much of that knee is
missing, how little is left to do all the things I demand of it.
When I was twenty six, after spending a year limping and recovering from my third surgery, my newly minted husband told me I'd become a slow moving person. He said it from kindness, to get me motivated, but it still hurt. Since I was seven or eight years old, I don't think a month had passed in my life when I wasn't riding my bike, cutting through the air and smelling the wind as I flew. I broke an arm speed roller-skating when I was ten. I played soccer in high school, mostly on a guy's team, because I didn't know any better. I didn't know I was too slow, too short. I just loved to play. As I did while a freshman in college, though all the other girls were faster and better prepared. I even jogged and lifted weights. I never thought of myself as an athlete or any good at sports. I wasn't particularly. But I did think of myself as energetic, healthy, alive.
And now he was saying I was slow moving? It was true. If you get used to favoring a leg and moving slowly, you become that way. Just as I find that when I get used to eating junk food, it's all I crave. Or if I start thinking about one disaster that might happen, I can't stop other fears from taking over. My habits of moving, thinking, and feeling twist around me, binding my limbs and pulling me downward.
I was determined not to be slow moving—so I practiced moving more quickly. Sure enough, it wasn't many more months before I was back to normal. And I wanted to keep it that way. It was tempting to slip back toward doing the things I loved—joining a soccer team, testing for the black belt I was two weeks from earning, playing tennis for fun. But I cared about being active in my later years too—I saw myself as connected to that old person I would become. So I resigned myself to giving up some of the things I loved. No more twisting sports, no more soccer, karate, or softball, no more contact or team sports. What did that leave? Straight-ahead moves. So I took up running, swimming, cycling, weight lifting. When I turned thirty eight I did my first triathlon, one of five so far.
In one sense, my knee has been one of my greatest accomplishments—it's given me a chance to face an obstacle, to accept my limitations and push myself within them, to identify with others facing similar troubles.
But that knee is always an alien presence. I never know if I'll have a good day or a bad one, a pain-free month or one where I'm back on crutches with an ice pack and an ace wrap. I never know when I'll be attacked from within. I don't know if I'll be able to do the long bike trip I’m planning in December. Or whether I'll be able to walk down to the corner this afternoon. Last night I only made it halfway down the stairs before it gave out and I needed help. And so I am vulnerable. Anything could happen. Or is it that my knee is simply trying to tell me something that I should've known in the first place? That of course we're all vulnerable, all the time, whether we recognize it or not. Borrowed bodies, borrowed time.
Next