Anyway, we found out that that the strained or pulled muscle in his knee is actually... *drum roll, please*... avascular necrosis. Yes, that is, deadening of the bone and yes, a term we are all too hesitantly familiar with and yes, exactly what happened to the other two, three, no wait, FOUR other joints thus far since his departure from the D6 Health Sciences cancer ward some eight years ago.
Can you believe it? I mean, we certainly can. It's to be expected. How COULD we possibly get away for this long without SOMETHING else going wrong? I mean, it's US. Something ALWAYS happens to us. Because we can "handle it" (sarcasm) or because we can HANDLE it? (Dripping bitterness tagging the laughable state of it.) Well, whatever. Because we can A-Effin-Handle it.
It's "funny", too, just blee-friggin'-hilarious, you know, because the very first time this started going on with his hip, we thought it was a pulled groin muscle. And back in May or June sometime, he had fallen down the stairs and twisted his knee. We had 'only' to suspect it was sprained because it's BEEN... three... four years since the last joint replacement (four of four joints in total.) And well, jeese, how long could this crap STILL be in his system? I thought we were DONE with that crap? I thought that maybe, just maybe, after being so jumpy and bitter and controlling and uptight in expecting the return of Crap Jack (otherwise inspired term for all things medical) and finally learning to breathe and relax and maybe, just maybe, consider a life without any more of the MEDICAL effin' SAGA, that this horrible monstrosity of a past could just be left there, left in the past.
It's not that I really feel like this is more crap catching up to us from this ever-hellish-abode of crap-doling entity of cancer, like I used to. Not like I used to anyway, where there was no chance to chew on each major obstacle before moving headlong and naively into the next. After all, we've have four good years to chew on and settle on life with all four new joints and no cancer combined. But I DO have to wonder what in the HELL is going on? What is this for? What are the reasons for this? I mean, we were just planning this hella big do-over wedding-type celebration and now THIS to taint it all? It's like we can't have anything untouched or blemished in some way. And it's not about the selfish part of having this new doosie affecting our ceremony, it's just purely and simply about moving into something with good intentions, good strong hearts, a time in our life and now for what? So something, someone, somewhere can make a mockery of what we've finally, FINALLY worked so hard to become??
Not like it's going to be that bad or that monstrous compared to the last. Like I've told him, it's not the worst we've ever been through. In a moment's eye, we've BEEN through the worst. There is nothing worse than what we went through. (Although there IS, but half of moving on is not fearing or panicking about the horrible possibilities.) I mean, I have never assumed that we were done struggling, I have only hoped that we wouldn't have to go through any more. I mean, we're good people. We're trying to take the lessons we're meant to learn from it. So that would lead to a certain amount of reasonable, expectant hope that we could take more control over our lives than the helter skelter that was our first ten. We were SO young back then! I just didn't think the cruelty of it all... well... I just kind of hoped God and His angels would protect us from that.
It's just that it moves us all backwards. I mean, it does and it doesn't. We are in a different place now, both as people and as a couple. Stronger, committed on a whole new level, better adjusted, older, most importantly, I think and I hope, wiser for our lessons. And so in that, we will be fine. I have no doubt. It's just that it takes us back to the place where we were before. The memories of the surgeries past, the subsequent and ultimate toll they ended up taking on our union. It's like someone taking the stains of the past that you can't remove and showing them to you again. You remember how they got there, what happened, the circumstances surrounding them, the pain associated with blemish, but you can't do anything about it and somehow, it's happening again. I mean, we did what we could to move on by simply trying to extract the lessons we thought we were supposed to and take baby steps forward, side-by-side. In trying to understand what we were supposed to "get" from such trials and pain lead to dwelling on it and dwelling on it almost cost us our marriage. So even though two elements are completely seperate, one intertwined with the other. With us.
Anyway, those are my thoughts on this. K has been joking about it and so have his friends. I don't think that a majority of them really get what it means to be in this situation, again, even if sympathetic. But we've grown accustomed to the sterile apathy in some, the means to keep it light-hearted in others, and just the generally different ways people deal with things in their own right. But I sure do feel like a jerk now after having submitted a joke ad about Kyle back in June.
