Thursday, March 07, 2013

Tanker Knees


My daughter's blog post today reminded me that I should post the event coming up in our lives on Monday, March 11th. George is going into Rutland Regional Hospital to have double knee replacement. He has old injuries from playing football in high school and college, and that was compounded with jumping off tanks for years and years, as a Master Gunner. At the urging of some of our children, he began the process of seeing the doctor for advice etc. The advice was very clear: he literally has no knee function worth talking about and he's very unsteady in his walk. The doctor said "knees don't get any worse than what we are seeing on the xray here." It was clear. Surgery needs to be done. So here we are.

The picture above is the perfect example of a man who loves life, but is restricted by his lack of mobility. (note the walking stick and the bowed leg) I had no idea how much the knee malfunction affected my husband's dreams and goals. Ever since we gave the go ahead for surgery we are getting more and more excited about what we can do together. The Texas two step is in our future, as is losing weight together with exercise and cross country skiing next winter maybe, if we both find we enjoy it.

Surgery is scary but we are focusing on the prize ahead. We feel blessed to be able to focus on better quality of life when many others in our lives are thankful just for life itself. Today is the day to live our lives. Tomorrow never comes. We can only live today.