Well, it feels like I am healing. I can walk again. I can lift my leg again. I am not in excruciating pain anymore. I must say modern medicine is a miracle. I thank God I was able to have this surgery done. Otherwise, at some point, I would have ended up like the beggar at the pool of Bethesda.
The few weeks before my hip surgery, I would get up, go to work, come home, and go to bed. I just couldn’t do much more than that. It hurt too bad to do anything. I was limited in so many ways. I couldn’t lift my leg off the ground more than about an inch, I struggled to get my leg in the car, I couldn’t tie my shoe, and struggled to dress myself, or get a sock on that foot. At the grocery store, I would hang on the cart to carry to support my body through the store, until the last week when I just refused to go to the store anymore. I couldn’t step over anything and would easily lose my balance. My teen boys needed to treat dad like he was great grandpa dad.
It had also gotten bad enough that I had a few instances of my leg going numb and me not being able to stand on it. I remember driving to work one morning. I went to get out of the car and every time I put pressure on that leg, it was as though the leg would not support me. It buckled every time. I sat there massaging my hit, letting my leg dangle, shaking my leg, and swinging my leg back and forth. After a few minutes it came back and I could walk into the office. But, it was a terrifying experience. Immediately I wondered if I would need crutches or a walking cane.
I had a terrible limp before my surgery, but it was a limp that built up over multiple years progressively getting worse. My complete mobility was in the toilet. Right now I’m trying to walk with a walker and straighten out my walk. I’m not 100% sure if my continued limping is due to that hip buckling under weakness or muscle memory from my previous walk.
The physical therapist scared the bat snot out of me saying that I could still get an infection in it and then need to have it replaced again. She told me this worst-case scenario where 6 or 8 weeks after the surgery the guy all of a sudden couldn’t walk one morning. His hip had an infection. They had to take the prosthetic out, put him in the hospital for a week on a dip IV, then in his own bed for 6 weeks with an attending nurse for another 6 weeks on antibiotics before they could go in and replace the hip again. That is enough to make you not want to experience a worst-case scenario. I think about it and it is a risk I would have had to take either way. I could not survive walking on that bad hip anymore.
Let’s set that aside and talk about religion. I have been in a funk the last week. I have sat down and tried to write dozens of times and I have not been able to complete a post because I couldn’t not form coherent thoughts. I did make a few videos. I felt like I needed to make more videos but struggled with content. I would really like to use my own images and video but I still don’t have the freedom to do so. I didn’t start diving again until yesterday.
I also wrote a post that was more doctrinally heavy, and I didn’t feel comfortable with it. If I think about it, which I have, I think there are two reasons for that. The first is that I don’t want to be a source of deep doctrine. I may like it and read it, but don’t see it as a strength teaching it. The second is that I prefer and I feel the spirit stronger when I express the more simple points of the doctrine. Those basic concepts of faith. This would be the difference between trying to teach why Adam had a belly button and teaching that we should all be baptized. I see what everyone else is doing and I don’t have a desire to do that. I’ll leave those things to those who are hungry to produce them.
Anyhow, I felt the last week as though I was in a stupor of thought. I just wasn’t going anywhere. I didn’t have this overwhelming feeling or inspiration to write on any subject, so when I tried, I failed. I have 6 posts I started in the last week and haven’t finished. I will often have something trigger me to write on a subject. I don’t feel I had that this week.
We’ll see what happens in the next week. I still have not been in a situation too fast. I have been trying to set aside time to study, read, and pray. My favorite way to pray is kneeling and I probably will not be able to do so for any length of time for a while. It’s like of like sleeping on my back. If I sleep on my back my mind wanders. I have a hard time controlling it. If I pray sitting up in a chair, my prayer ends up being quick, and shallow, and pondering as part of my prayer is non-existent.
Maybe this next week will be better spiritually.