Today has been a sucky day. The suckiness was compunded by the fact that the “loaner knee” [think ‘loaner car’–it’s a beat up old knee sent out to anyone whose knee is in the shop] that my prosthetist installed on my leg yesterday is confused.

For whatever reason this knee has a few wires crossed. It thinks that when I step down on my toe I’m really stepping down on my heel. So everytime I take a step it hesitates and locks. It doesn’t make me fall, but it’s an odd sensation that makes me feel like me knee is about the bend the wrong direction.

So added to the fact that I was up almost the whole night last night writing papers, and I’m still jetlagged, and my kids are stressed about school, and John has had to compensate for my lack of mobility this week, etc…Everytime I take a step it literally feels like a step backward rather than forward. Also, my leg is sans skin right now and there’s a big sticker running down the front of my metallic blue shin that says SERVICE. As if I don’t know that this is the ‘service’ knee. As if I need to announce this to every passersby. Like it isn’t hard anough having to teach a class to 60 undergrads when I can’t even take a confident step and I’ve got such a bizarre sticker on my leg. As if I really needed that today.

I think I came the closest yet to throwing in the towel. To saying that grad school isn’t worth it. To saying that I want to curl up with my favorite sweater and a trashy novel and STOP TRYING SO HARD.

A part of me wanted to go up to my teachers and tell them how today really sucked and I can’t walk and I’m tired and don’t we all just have days like these and do they mind if I’m not at my best today and can I turn in my assignments late or can I just take today off? But then that other part of me that listens to excuses from my students and rolls my eyes at their ‘illnesses’ or their computer snafus, or whatever, that part of my realized that I couldn’t go to my profs with an excuse. I just can’t tell them about what it’s like to have a broken knee, to hardly be able to walk, to feel frustrated and ashamed by this dorky loaner.

I can’t tell them that it’s just not my fault that today sucks.

BTW, just now I peeled off the SERVICE sticker. It almost made me feel better.

It’s a hot white sheen that shimmers across the top of my right shin. It burns there, deep and slow. And every once in awhile flares hot and close to the bone. I see it in my mind’s eye. It is the vision that hurts.

On a night like last night I lie awake. Hoping the pain will cease so I can sleep. I twist the feather comforter into a tight wad . I wrap my legs around it. I bury my face and hands into it. I bear down.

Sometimes the pain is a comfort. A connection to what is lost. Sometimes it makes me wonder why it still hurts so bad. To lose a limb. After 21 years.

My prosthetist Tom was himself an above-knee amputee. I met him on Christmas Eve when my knee broke. I was at home with my two children—the youngest just one-month old. I was despondent. How could I care for two children with a broken knee and I wouldn’t be able to get it fixed until after the holiday? I began calling all the prosthetists in the Yellow Pages. Tom answered his phone and agreed to make a housecall. He came by and quickly ascertained the problem. He made a quick run back to his office for parts and made the repair. When I asked him how much money I owed him, he said “Merry Christmas” and winked at my children as he headed out the door.

Years later when I wanted a leg that I could wear kayaking and to the beach, Tom made me a pylon with a plunger-like rubber stopper on the bottom instead of a foot. I loved wearing that leg. It had no knee, no technology. It cost only a few dollars.

Garry, my current prosthetist, was assigned to me by my HMO. He works for a growing chain of prosthetic offices. My latest leg cost $64,000—which the HMO paid for. It has a computerized knee joint and it has a battery that needs to be ‘charged’ every 24 hours. It imitates an almost-natural knee motion. I can walk down hills and stairs and on even surfaces without fear of falling. It has a lifelike cosmetic cover. I can bounce on my toe three times to change the ‘mode’ of the knee for sports activity.

But it can’t get wet. And it makes me nervous to go barefoot because the points for the electrical charger are on the side of my ankle. I haven’t gone to the beach in two years.

No one leaves comments on my blog, but I have had some nice emails and comments from friends who seem to enjoy reading it. Perhaps the post that’s generated the most comments is walking (about a friend who was critiquing the way I walk).

It’s interesting that being disabled means that your body is a public object–most everywhere I go I am stared at or asked questions about my leg. I’m pretty used to it. I expect that when I’m walking through a mall there will be numerous people staring (maybe that’s why I don’t care for malls?).

When I was in France I noticed that everyone stared at everyone. It was a socially accepted and expected activity. Here in the US people are more subtle–they try to stare without me knowing that they are staring. This is particularly obvious when my back is turned to people and I quickly turn around and see them averting their eyes. It’s funny, too, when I’m at the gym and people forget that the walls are mirrored and I can see them staring.

When I was younger I used to wish that just for a day I could go in public wearing shorts and not being noticed. Now I think I’m so used to it that I don’t even care any more.

Though the stares don’t bother me, sometimes the comments or well-intentioned adults do. The most common is, perhaps, the question about why I don’t run marathons or participate in a paralympic sport “like so many other amputees” that this person has seen on TV. Well, duh. My cynical response is to ask them how many olympic medals they’ve won recently [And then there was that one day that someone at church insisted that I had dated her brother, simply because I was an amputee and she knew he had dated an amputee. As if I was the only female amputee in the western hemisphere. Sheesh].

Though the adult comments sometimes sting, kids’ questions rarely do. For the past 4 years I’ve encountered hordes of kindergarteners each day as I picked up my kids from school (the kindergarten classrooms are near the school entrace so I always pass them). When I don’t wear my “skin” (when my pylon leg is showing), the kids are so fascinated!! They meake me feel famous as they gather around me with awe and ask to touch my leg. I love it. We have such fun conversations. It’s the well-intentioned adults that try to shush them that leave me feeling disabled.