The Knee Rules

Nurse Jan here.

My husband had his right knee replaced with something mysterious and mechanical. Like most things we’ve encountered as a couple, we probably underestimated the complexity of this process and overestimated our ability to handle the aftermath. But here we are.

I’ll tell you this: we as a couple and our marriage as an institution successfully conquered the too-narrow sidewalk leading to our back porch, negotiated the five steps up, maneuvered a walker into the doorway and made it to the living room where we have lived since Wednesday because, you know, 100-year-old houses have stairs. Lots of them. We are not stair ready.

We are pretending that we are camping. Except with cold packs and a leg wedge and a row of medicines and a chart keeping track. An alarm goes off on my phone for one especially key medicine. I am doing a good job. He is a good patient. We bump along.

The knee rules. This means that the sadness over our alderman’s death by suicide and the deep grief and worry about the election results are temporarily piled in the closet with the winter hats and coats that are too warm for the weather. It is, however, predicted to get much colder later in the week so we shall see.

Nora Ephron was famous for saying, “Everything is copy,” meaning that every experience, every encounter, every meal, all of it, everything everywhere is fodder for a writer. I believe that. That’s how I approach my writing but sometimes there is too much copy, too many things happening, the cacophony is deafening and paralyzing. That describes the past ten days.

That’s why the knee rules.