I’m getting ready for surgery next week. I am having my left knee joint replaced. Ouch! I know it’s time. Constant pain, unable to walk for long and starting to affect my outlook on life. On Tuesday morning my surgeon and his team will make a six inch incision on the inside of my knee, retract vital parts (best way to say it), remove enough of my bone to insert plastic and titanium parts that will become my High Performance JOURNEY II BCS Knee! I have a little booklet with pictures and full explanation. Trust me when I say you don’t really want to know more.

The photo on the front of the booklet shows a mother and father with their twenty-year-old son happily hiking with backpacks, uphill. No visible scar on any knee by the way. Interesting.

How am I feeling? Well, that depends. I feel very confident in my surgical team, my post recovery team and my rehabilitation team. I know with unwavering confidence that Renee is dedicated to supporting me and doing whatever it takes to keep me comfortable and to keep my pain under control. I feel grateful beyond words for her care. I feel grateful also for my family and friends; for their prayers, offers to help and words of support. That should cover it, right?

Not quite. That leaves me. My feelings about me. And you know what? I’m scared, a little anxious and sad. I don’t like the idea of being in a fragile and vulnerable state. I don’t like the fact that I’ll be pulled out of the world, the world that will keep right on turning without me. I’m scared that maybe something will go wrong, that I won’t heal, that there will be some awful damn lesson I’ll have to learn before the pain will go away.

I also have an affirmation. I found it in a book, by accident (if I believed in accidents) while looking for something else. It was a dog-eared page in the Autobiography of a Yogi, page 129: “Medicines have limitations; the divine creative life force has none. Believe that: you shall be well and strong.”

So there you have it…my human doubt…and the spiritual truth. I am okay wearing both, at the same time. It is what it is to feel human and to lean with faith and trust toward God.

The Divine Creative Life Force in me has no limitations. Amen.
Paula