About six days ago from when this posts, I was getting close to the operating room, where a nice, young surgeon was planning to repair my torn rotator cuff. Now, a few hours from when this posts, I will once more be in the operating room, where the same young surgeon will repair my knee.

I had been adapting fairly well to having only one working arm, especially with two working legs. I had taken Zoe, our big, lumbering dog, out for a quick constitutional, and was starting up the three steps leading from our garage into our kitchen. And then something happened. I don’t really know how, but I was falling and twisting on the first or second step, completely unable to stop myself. I ended up wedged facing out between the steps and a bookcase we have against the garage wall. My right knee had a dent about the size of a pingpong ball and the shape of the edge of a stair tread. My shoulder was unharmed. I assume I somehow managed to twist around to protect it, but no one but the dog knows, and she isn’t talking.

I called out, and Leah rushed to see what had happened. I was not able to get myself out of the wedged position I was in. I couldn’t bring my good, left arm to bear, and my right arm was, of course, useless. I simply didn’t have the strength to get myself up. Leah brought a chair out, and I was able to scoot around to it and eventually climb up. I found that I could just stand on my right leg if I locked my knee, but otherwise I couldn’t support my weight with that leg.

To make a long story short, I tore the tendons that connect the quadriceps muscles to the knee cap. I can’t raise my leg because the muscles are no longer connected to their attachment point. I have been hobbling around with a cane and a leg brace to keep my knee from buckling.

We went to the surgeon’s office Wednesday, and he said we could repair it as early as Thursday. So I went for that. Better to get it over with. Leah was not happy, since that gave us essentially no time to prepare.

The doctor said I could stay in the hospital overnight or come home the day of the surgery. I chose to come home, but that might have been a mistake. I expect more pain with this surgery than with my shoulder repair. The shoulder repair was arthroscopic. The knee will not be.

The doctor wants me in a wheelchair for a couple of weeks, and then maybe a leg brace.

We got a wheelchair, but that’s probably the least of our worries. In addition to two dogs that will need walking, we also have to figure out how to get me from the hospital into our house. As it is now, I can back up to the rear door of our car and scoot myself across the seat, an inch at a time, until I can get my right leg into the car. Then, I have to reverse the process to get out. It turns out that leather seats and pants are not mutually slidey. And the little hump on the bench seat between the two outer seats is really big when you’re trying to slide over it with only one good leg. I don’t know how this will work when I get our of surgery.

The good part of this is that relatives have come out of the woodwork to offer to help. We have a cousin who lives in Texas Valley who volunteered to come over and help me out of the car and into the house. Another cousin and her husband, and my aunt have also volunteered to do anything they can. I posted on Facebook, looking for a dog walker, and the wife of our neighbor who graded our current lot volunteered to help any way she could. So that was encouraging. Anything will help at this point.