on pain

On a scale of 1-10, ten being the absolute worse agony ever experienced, I used to live at a constant seven. My knee was falling apart and I felt it everywhere. For the last five years, I learned how to live with that pain. I stopped talking about it. I stopped noticing it. When you live with that kind of pain 24/7, it becomes a part of you.

and then I had this miraculous surgery that fixed my knee. And after all the rough rehab; I'm pain free 95% of the time. It's been incredible and the quality of my life has improved so much that I can't even find words to describe the life that has been breathed into me.

But, that doesn't mean I'm normal again. I still have the smallest gait issues when walking and not thinking about my movements and my left hip has developed some severe arthritis from walking so poorly for so long. It's never been really unbearable-I lived at a constant seven, it was nothing new. But after working so hard to realign my body; it seems to have made things worse in the hip department. And the last few days have been back at that constant roar of seven, except it's in my hip. It's new territory. It's uncomfortable and it aches all of the time and sometimes I can't move because it is throbbing so badly.

But, such is life. I've got two legs. and at the end of the day, I'll take the pain, because it means I have two legs and I have a working knee and I'm alive. And that is more important then anything else.