Making Adjustments

In the amputee world, if you are an above-the-knee amputee, you don't call your prosthesis your leg; you call it your knee. It took me a while to figure this out, but in reality, I get it.

The world of being an above knee amputee is a world of difference from those who got to keep their knee. Think about it-- your knee, and to a lesser extent, your ankle, are what keeps you walking, running, getting up and sitting down, sitting on the floor, kneeling-- you name it.

I was fortunate enough that my prosthetist wrote a killer letter to Medicare to get me a really good knee. It has a microprocessor in it. It is intuitive, and yes, it is adjustable.

I generally don't mess with the adjustments except when I'm doing some Pilates exercises so my knee won't bend. That has been incredibly useful. Also, I can put it in a kind of freewheel for cycling. Also useful.

But what I had never messed with was the resistance, that is, how "difficult" it is for the knee to bend. I had kind of forgotten about it until I was faced with going down a lot of inclines in France.

The very first I encountered was getting off the boat during our Bordeaux river cruise. My new foot is far more flexible, but my knee doesn't understand that I'm going downhill and not just walking, so it initiates a swing, an important part of walking, but not so great going down an incline.

I was scared. All I could think was, how am I ever going to do this?

After day or two of feeling like I was taking my life into my hands, I remembered there might be a way to slow down that bend in my knee. I emailed my prosthetist for advice, and my intuition was correct: I could make the resistance greater, thus slowing down that bend.

I shifted it a few degrees, and then a few more. It helped immensely. It didn't make it a breeze, but it made it doable. When I was walking alone, without Jerry to hold onto, it was scary, but doable.

The new foot was a rock star on cobblestone and grassy, divot-filled vineyards. It shifted, it gave, almost as pliable as my other foot.

I had day after day of walking a lot. As the week went on, Jerry and I were frequently not together. We opted for different "experiences," as the cruise company calls them. He bicycled through wine country; I rode the bus or walked. He opted for a steep descent into the lower part of St. Emilion; I took the high road. Jerry went to an old flour mill; I went to a tiny winery and met the owners' dogs and sheep.

When we had few days on our own in Bordeaux after the cruise, we went to a couple museums. When they offered me a wheelchair, I said yes. Despite that, I still got in thousands of steps every day.

At this point I realize I have nothing to prove. Life is to be enjoyed, savored. Of course,there are times when I hate my circumstance in life, and while no fan of can you top this, I know there are people who have it much worse than I do, so I try to remain grateful that I'm alive and I can still enjoy everything I can do, rather than dwelling on what I can't do.