This Changes Everything

by Sally Ember, Ed.D.

  **********************

  Long term: permanent nerve damage to my right knee and lower leg. I go from recreational tennis player since age 7, bike rider, amateur gymnast, avid water skier, happy leisure-time athlete to partial cripple at age 17. For the next forty years, until 1998 when I break my right ankle and rest my leg for two months, I am frequently on crutches or using a cane, sometimes in a wheelchair.

  I am told in my first year of college that surgery has only a 25% chance of improving the damage, the same chance of making it worse, and a 50% chance of staying the same. Not liking those odds, I don't have surgery.

  I am often unable to drive or walk. For stairs (every house I live in for decades has stairs), I crawl and sit/bump, struggling to stay mobile. I wear an ace bandage around my right calf for twenty-five years to reduce the jiggling that increases the pain due to irritation of the nerve.

  I am in constant pain, regardless of how much I use my leg. Sometimes I lay around, crying. Sometimes I tough it out. I do not take any pain meds, but when NSAIDs, like ibuprofen, become widely available and I use them for menstrual cramps, I discover that they help with the inflammation in my leg, so I take them for pain sometimes. Wrapping my entire lower leg and knee in a soft ice pack gives me the most relief. I do that daily for many years.

  I am usually tired because the pain is worse at night and I do not sleep well. I feel very isolated because I must restrict using my leg to avoid worse incapacitation, with constant vigilance. Almost no one understands and I get weary of explaining. I know some people perceive me as lazy, unmotivated, unsocial or disinterested. I am bombarded with well-meaning people’s advice and recommendations. The only medical method which helps at all is acupuncture; I am walking due to those treatments. Chronic pain and disability dominate my life.