By the fourth day I could hop around a little bit without holding myself up like a gymnast on the parallel bars; at the end of a week I managed to pull myself off the boat onto a borrowed set of stairs, and hobble-walked to the end of the dock.
Looking out over the water felt like total, absolute Freedom ... as if I'd just experienced being mobile for the very first time.
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My knee didn't hurt much during the day but nights were excruciating and sleep became iffy. Sitting up was OK but something about lying down and becoming horizontal brought my knee to life and made it sing ... to the point of tears and nausea.
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Prior to this event the worst pain I'd ever experienced was from a tooth that had worn away sufficiently to expose the nerve. The oral surgeon told me women who've experienced both describe childbirth as about 70% less.
In a previous post I wrote I didn't know why insomnia kept me up all night on Monday but the fact is that no matter how I tried to position myself when trying to fall asleep, within a few minutes my knee would wake up and start feeling like it was being pulled out of socket and twisted from my body.
And so I prayed.
