The Mind Is Willing and the Body Is Not.

I’ve passed the initial age where stretching wrong as I get out of bed can result in a pulled shoulder blade muscle that makes deep breathing difficult, or turning around to look out the rear window while backing up the car can torque a muscle in the neck. These are occurrences that memes are made of. So I shouldn’t be surprised that I can hurt my knee standing up from the toilette. Which is exactly what happened at the beginning of November.

Earlier in the day I took a quick break from work to practicing ollies on my skateboard - a skateboarding trick where the rider and board leap into the air without the use of the rider’s hands. I didn’t do any stretches beforehand (in hindsight, a mistake) and, at one point, I felt a weird feeling in my left knee. I thought nothing of it and went back to work. A few hours later, everything fine, and I go to the bathroom. As I stand from the deed, my left knee decided it was time to stop working and sent a shooting pain through my nervous system. I collapsed to the floor, managed to get up, pogo’ed myself up the stairs on my good leg, and told my wife I hurt my knee getting off the toilette. She laughed.

After a few days and barley much improvement, I scheduled an appointment with an orthopedic specialist which, at the time of this writing, happens next week. I reflect on this incident now, almost a month later, because I went through a pretty drastic mood swing. The first one, at the outset of the injury, I was pretty grouchy because I couldn’t do any of the physical things I wanted to do. After a couple of days of unhappiness, I remembered a therapy teaching about not letting myself get hung up on things I have no control over. Kind of like how it’s pointless to get angry when I’m stuck in traffic - there’s nothing I can do about it and the only thing I have control over are my thoughts in that case. So, I tried to force myself to think about the knee situation differently and kept repeating the following thoughts: “it could be worse”, “it feels better today”, “this isn’t permanent”, “I’m actually okay, all things considered”, etc etc. And, wouldn’t you know it, my mood improved, faster, actually, than my knee has.