Strengthen the Feeble Knees

Hope is a two-edged sword. When it is placed in something that has meaning, it can lift and inspire us to positive outcomes. But when it is puffed up in false dreams of quick, painless solutions, that counterfeit hope can be devastating once it has been dashed.

Well, it is no secret I have very bad knees. With my last pregnancy I was bedridden for much of the time and the muscle atrophy plus the effects of many babies left my knee caps pulled permanently out of place. I went to a number of specialists who were stumped by it until finally one little nurse practitioner, Mary Harms, figured it out.

Actually it is very common for women who have had more then three children, especially those with twins to have this condition. The statistics I remember is that 46% of women will experience patella-femoral syndrome or PFS. Very simply what happens is as your hips widen during the birthing process, the VMO muscle which connects your knees to your hips pulls your knee caps slightly out of their grooves. Instead of bending smoothly, your knee scraps along raw bone and sounds a little like rice krispies when you bend it.

Well, due to a few other health conditions, my PFS has gotten pretty bad. As a matter of fact I usually take the stairs one at a time. One Sunday I was hobbling down the three little steps at the front of the chapel after singing in the choir when a sister noticed my graceless decent and mentioned that she had a knee doctor that worked miracles. Now I think I've read just about everything there is on this subject. I know that for a while they were doing kneecap replacements that weren't very successful and before that they would burn the muscle so it would contract and put the patella back in place- but that lasted only a short while before the weakened muscle left you in a worse predicament. There is another procedure where they try to restructure your leg using the tibia and fibula but the recovery is difficult and the success rate isn't very high. The truth is, there isn't very much that anyone can do. You just try to diet, do isometrics and try not to use your knees too much.

Well, after listening to this woman at church I started hoping that she was right, dreaming that there really might be some simple answer. I made an appointment with the doctor and went to it this morning. I wanted so much for a miracle cure. As I sat explaining my condition to the nurse, reality started oozing in and I became somewhat weepy. Sure enough, the doctor told me everything I already knew. That I needed to lose weight, duh, and do my little exercises every night. (Turning out my feet and doing small leg lifts, twisting my leg inward until I'm pidgeon-toed over and over, and if I'm really brave wall sits with a ball between my legs.)

He said I could go to physical therapy again and that they might have a couple of things I hadn't seen yet but the reality is most true answers don't come in a pill or an operation or even in a priesthood blessing, although they may help a little. Most real solutions come by making good decisions day after day. The blessings build a drop at a time. The healing trickles in over months and years. Both physically and spiritually. Quick fixes are rarely long lasting. Bummer.

Strengthen the Feeble Knees

This weekend we had a huge garage sale sponsored by the YW and YM in our ward to help pay for camp. In the past they have done a simple auction of service, most never performed, that was more like a hand-out than anything else. As YW's president I felt we needed a venue for some of these children to really earn their camp experience through hard work. We did a neighborhood pickup and filled our three-car garage to the ceiling.

For the three days before the actual event we sorted, brought over load after load, priced and displayed. It was a gift to watch three of our young girls come day after day, more willing and helpful than I'd ever seen them and after the sale was over, we earned our goal and then some.

The only problem is that I have arthritis in my knees and had really over-done it. I knew I was sore but had to play catch up for the next three days, doing all the things I had put off during the garage sale event. Needless to say, when I woke up this morning, my knees were done. One had actually swollen so large that it could compete with an imposing water balloon.When this happens, which isn't often, there is nothing to be done but to put up my legs for three stinking days until they can recover. I hate it, but there is no working through it- I just need to stop.

It is interesting how some issues we can just muscle our way through. If we ignore them, they go away and we find we are further up the path and life is good. Some temptations are this way, many of our moods and the complaints of our children aren't worthy of our focus and even some physical pain will simply heal on its own if we just keep doing the things we know that are right and keep moving forward. But every once in a while, problems don't go away like that and priorities must be shifted. Our lives need to adjust to help "strengthen the feeble knees and the hands that hang down"- but the hardest time to do that is when those knees and hands are our own.

Luckily, my fourth son had a sinus infection and is home for the day. He graciously served me a Belgian Waffle for breakfast and a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for lunch. I've been able to review a fascinating manuscript that I had promised to look at for a friend but hadn't had an extra second to face and hope to finish a few chapters in my latest work in progress. It's all good- just terribly inconvenient.