moving

The story of the knees

I hate being injured. I am not a good patient. This is the first time since before I gave birth to Quinn that I have been injured. When I was pregnant and sprained my ankle, I wasn’t really doing anything strenuous anyway so it was easy to rest but now, it’s different. My knees started hurting around 9/10 or 9/11. We were scheduled to move furniture with Jacob’s mom and step dad that next Saturday; still so much to do before our closing on 9/16/15. Both of my knees swelled up beyond recognition and I was barely walking.

Of course, I kept pushing myself. I couldn’t stand watching Jacob’s parents move our stuff for us even if they were buying a bunch of our furniture. It was a mistake. By that evening, I was in terrible pain. Jacob was so stressed. Worrying about all we still had left to move and what the heck was going on with my knees. I called in reinforcements to help with the rest of the stuff (thank you Crissey and Conor) on Sunday and tried to sit as much as possible. Still not really taking it as easy as I should have. Even though we finished the bulk of the move and give-away-purge, we still had so much left. Jacob was still working. Ahhh. I don’t know how we accomplished it, a lot of arguing and high emotions. Fast forward….we got all of our stuff out by closing. The last bits dumped in Crissey’s garage to be dealt with later.

I went to the doctor and was directed to get x-rays to rule out stress fractures in both of my patella. My good friend Kevin Vernon is a talented Physical Therapist and insisted on seeing me the next day. With x-rays in hand I went to his office. His diagnosis was amy's broken kneessevere bursitis but still some concern I had injured the joint in my left knee somehow. With a lot of pushing we got my PCP to prescribe oral steroids to bring the swelling down immediately. I was instructed to continue to elevate and ice. Of course that weekend I was scheduled to go to a wine fest with all of my close girlfriends. The last Girls Weekend for at least a year. Damnit! All I could do was sit while they went on walks. I sat at the festival. They took good care of me, didn’t allow me to push it. Told me to sit. My knees got better fast with the steroids but still my range of motion on the right need was very limited, still hobbling.

On Sunday evening, we said goodbye to Jen and Ben and drove to Monument to spend the next couple of days with my parents. I had made a “just-in-case” appointment with my Dad’s orthopedist for that next Monday. Good thing. He took a look at my x-rays, made me get more (the cost of this is now skyrocketing, I am sure) and then determined I needed to have the right knee drained and shot with cortisone in addition to blood work to rule out rheumatoid arthritis (negative, whew!).

So, fast forward another week, I am sitting at our campsite at Natural Bridges National Park in Utah. Jacob and the girls are hiking to the amazing bridges and I am stuck resting. My right knee feels great, left, still swollen. Better, at least I am not limping but still feels puffy and hard to bend all the way. I know this is best for me; I will miss many amazing sites if I keep pushing myself but DAMNIT! My dear friend Carrie, says the knees are connected to the root chakra which is your sense of prosperity and security. I have definitely just taken a HUGE security blanket away, it makes sense that on an energetic, psychological level that insecurity would manifest in my body in this way. So, just as I meditated on this morning, “My sense of security is within” “I am ready to move forward and accept change”. I will continue with this mantra while I cut up watermelon to bring back to the thirsty hikers.

Moving out and traveling on

Moving out is not as easy as I thought it would be.   My shoulder has been killing me and my stress level is at an all time high.  We are down to the final few days before we close on the house and I am seriously regretting not requesting a later closing/possession date.

This has been a tough three days and to complicate matters further, Amy’s knees are in bad shape.  They have swollen to nearly double their normal size and she can hardly move. On Friday, the reality of how much we had left to do started to sink in.  This isn’t going to be like when we moved to a new house.  This time we won’t have another house so all the loose ends must be tied up, they can’t just be thrown on the back of a moving truck to deal with later.  I knew we would figure this out, but it wasn’t going to be easy at all.

On Saturday, two close friends came by to pick up the couches they purchased.  Chris took one look around and said, “I hope you don’t have to be out today, cause you would be screwed!”  Thankfully we still had four more days at that point, but we weren’t far removed from being screwed.  My mom and Ben would be by soon to start helping move out the bedroom furniture that they purchased from us and the girls furniture that Ben made for them.  That would be a major piece for sure, but it wasn’t nearly enough.  After nearly seven hours of loading and unloading we still had more to do…they would have to return the next day to help get it done.

Needless to say, I slept poorly on Saturday night.  Despite my physical exhaustion I couldn’t help run through the list of all the unfinished items.  I kept wondering, how is this going to happen when Amy can hardly walk…Not to mention that if she is more seriously injured than tendonitis or bursitis it may have big impacts on our other plans.  As the morning dawned, Amy’s sister and nephew came over to help and so did my mother and Ben.  It turned into another long, exhausting day, but we made massive progress.  Progress to the point where my stress started to wane and I could actually sit down, enjoy a cheeseburger (albeit with no furniture other than lawn chairs) and watch the Bronco game.

This was an emotional weekend, often feeling physically beat down and mentally overwhelmed.  But it was a reminder of how important our friends and families are to us.  Without them, we would be nowhere near a point where we can finally say goodbye to our house and take this trip.  It is also a reminder that we will face some challenges during this adventure and that we won’t always have their immediate physical support to rely on in a pinch.  It is exciting and a little frightening at the same time to think about how we might overcome such times.