Sharon Latour
Can’t Run, Part One
After spending all my youth and the first grown-up “career” in athletics, it came as a big adjustment when, in 2006, I was told I’d never run again. Granted, I’ve never enjoyed running in the first place, but most sports require running at some phase of participation, whether in training or actual skill execution. So you run.
Or you don’t. When I managed a very hard-to-replicate injury (meaning: “How the heck did you manage that?”) while sleeping fitfully on a cot during hurricane relief efforts in Mississippi, I was told by my surgeon I’d walk away from the subsequent operation. Wrong-O.
When I could focus again in the recovery room, my young doctor was sitting in a low chair by the side of my gurney, head in hands. He said, “The quarter-sized chunk of cartilage you knocked off the end of your femur didn’t show up in the MRI; I didn’t know the extent of what needed to be done until I got in there. I’m so sorry (His head back in his hands).
I had to laugh...he was so pitiful. And then he told me he tried a stem cell technique, (my own, not dead baby cells, he assured me) that
That’s when I stopped cracking jokes to help him out. “But I live on the third floor. And seminary classes are up the hill from me!” (About a quarter-mile straight up scores of stairs.) (Head back in hands.) I took a deep breath.
Regaining some of that doctor-composure they learn in special courses at medical school or something, he continued, “If you don’t do exactly what I tell you, we could be back in there applying cadaver bone to try to patch that spot. As it is, you are very likely to have arthritis.” Great. (No more head in hands.)
But he really was amazingly kind. He timed my recovery after surgery to coincide with a fellow who provides rehab appliances to post-operation patients like me. He strapped me into the motorized device that would automatically bend and straighten my knee at least five hours a day. Something about joint lubrication and healing.
A seminary friend got me home, I hobbled up the stairs on sparkling new crutches, the machine was delivered, and I began my uncertain road to recovery. There were no guarantees this on-the-fly technique would work. I could do all this rehabbing and hobbling around for nothing. That was a tough potential disappointment to imagine getting through in the still-hovering cloud of general anesthesia.
Next week I want to tell you about the “getting through” part. But I can tell you now, that when the doctor told me I would never, ever run again, that I would have to do other things instead, I almost laughed (A doctor ordering “No running!”) but didn’t.
Strangely, I had a funny sense this whole “twist” to my swollen knee souvenir from Biloxi was going to be very, very good for me somehow, and I wouldn’t have to go back under the knife.
But it’s a far cry from fun when you’re sitting in bed with a humming machine manipulating your leg for you, that you suddenly realize you’ve only planned enough food and clean clothes to last a week. And you can’t carry anything that won’t fit into a backpack for the next six weeks. You’re gonna need help!
And maybe some of you are a bit like me: You never learned how to ask for help that couldn’t be quickly repaid in kind.
So, if it’s worthy, ponder these thoughts with me until next week; this particular story has a happy ending.
Shalom!
(Note for Friday Night Youth high schoolers and volunteers: We’ll plan to watch “Pay It Forward” or similar film Friday at 6 p.m., after dinner at 5:30, at the Community Presbyterian Church in Garberville.)
Sharon is pastor of the Garberville Community Presbyterian Church. Services are open to all on Sundays at 11 am. (Elder Robert Lameris is preaching this Sunday.) Comments or questions should be addressed to: Dr. Sharon Latour, c/o A Pastor’s Perspective, P.O. Box 65, Garberville, CA 95542. (707) 923-3295.
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