Can I turn pain into wisdom? I suppose that’s what I’m trying to do right now, as I sit with a notebook on my lap. I’m not feeling optimistic that I’ll succeed.
One of the inconveniences in my life these days is called gout, a condition, in my right knee, that absolutely lives up to the negativity of its name. Ongoing ouch. Indeed, getting around with the help of a cane—whom I had named Citizen Cane—no longer felt sufficiently safe. I started using a walker.
I also wound up getting a cortisone shot in the knee, which had significantly eased the pain in the past. But this time, oh my God, that’s not what happened. This time, my initial reaction was something the doctor called “transient steroid flare”—the pain, rather than easing up, increased with a unique intensity, unlike anything I could ever remember experiencing. Whenever I bent my knee, yikes, all the lights went out in Georgia, or something like that.
Here at the retirement community where I now live, I had to switch from independent living to temporary assisted living—ouch, indeed. Sitting in a chair, at a desk, in front of my computer, felt no more doable than climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro. Eventually, the steroid flare started to ebb and, wow, I could sit at my desk again. I could do stuff again. The gout is still there, of course. I still use the walker to get around and hardly trust my physical situation.
What comes next? Who knows? Am I suddenly appreciative of my ability to walk again, my ability to function? I’d like to cry yes, but I don’t really think so; certainly not appreciative enough. Maybe, as I return to my prior life—as I return to absorbing the news of the day, as I gape at the hell we inflict on one another—I can at least note with intensified wonder how lucky I have it compared to someone living in a war zone.
Robert Koehler is the author of ‘Courage Grows Strong at the Wound.’
