INTRO TO THIS SERIES
I recently went through knee replacement surgery…
Oh! You thought I meant that kind of “rehab”. No no… not that kind, but what I am learning through the recovery process has been very powerful as I consider my career working with people dealing with addiction issues, poor or destructive mindsets, and even people living in brokenness due to past trauma they’ve never recovered from.
A quick footnote for those unfamiliar with me, I am not a therapist but have spent 25 years working within the criminal justice system with mostly good people who made bad decisions out of their own brokenness. The saying “Hurt people hurt people” has been proven to be true over and over in my experience, so… yeah, my work has been with mostly good people who have been stuck in broken thinking and behavioral cycles that ended up causing damage to themselves as well as those around them.
However, I will also add here that I was a middle school and high school basketball coach, and with all the “training” I’ve had over the years as a probation officer, I would say the things I learned as a coach have been more practical, and much more meaningful to the recovery process for so many of my past clients.
If you will consider this, “Life” really is a game. It’s a serious game, but it’s a game. There are wins, there are losses, there are opportunities to learn from the losses, there are fundamentals that, if mastered, will assist us in maximizing our abilities in the game, and there are opportunities to take shortcuts and learn the hard way that shortcuts rarely deliver what they promise us.
At the time of this writing, I am just over 5 weeks past my knee surgery. I dropped the walker about 3 weeks ago and I use the cane mostly when I first wake up, when I’ve been sitting too long, or after a tough day of rehab when my legs feel more fatigued and I just want that security and added support.
Throughout this process, I’ve had a lot of time to… well, sit for one thing. But as I press through the mental barriers I have come up against, it’s given me some insight into “Recovery” in general.
So, I will be adding several different posts to my blog that are centered around the recovery process. This is incredibly relevant to “Climbing Mountains” and I will make that abundantly clear as you read on. I will also add links to the other posts related to this rehab process at the end of each post for those who come across this series somewhere in the middle. If I add a post I will update all previous posts to include the links.
Hope you’ll find it enjoyable, but more than that, I hope you will find some perspective shared here that challenges you in some productive way.
LINK TO OTHER POSTS IN THIS SERIES:
- Part 2: Granting Access to the Wound
- Part 3: Oxycodone, Ice, and …
AVOIDING THE KNIFE
It was 2015 and my left knee was in bad shape.
Okay, hang in there a minute, I’m not trying to make my medical issues some dramatic story, but this has everything to do with fear keeping me from climbing the mountains I deeply desired to climb. So, that said, can I be a bit dramatic here to make the point?
A very clear memory I had of my condition back in 2015 had to do with a long sidewalk that led from our office front door to the parking lot. There was a 90-degree turn in the sidewalk and then the curb stepping down to the blacktop lot. There were times when I took that 90-degree turn and felt a stabbing in my knee that was so painful it would almost cause me to buckle. Then, the stepdown from the curb was always a place where my movement was slow and methodical.
I’d sought medical advice and x-rays reflected I was bone on bone on the inside of my left knee joint with my leg bowing out like an ex-bull rider. At that time, I had a coworker who had knee replacement surgery and was battling with infections/complications that lasted almost 6 months after her surgery, so at 53 years old, the idea of going through a radical procedure that, at that time, had about a 10-year guarantee was not an option for me. My supervisor told me about stem cell replacement, and after looking into it, I chose to pay the $5600 out-of-pocket in efforts to remedy my situation.
I will say, the stem cell route was amazing because I was able to walk without pain within several days. That 90-degree turn in the sidewalk, and the curb leading to the parking lot were no longer my adversary.
By 2018 I had lost about 50lbs and began to pursue a love I had thought I would never again be able to experience – hike in the high country. The old familiar sound of the wind blowing through the pines and aspen trees had reawakened a love and I once again dreamed of the possibility of summiting 14’ers in the Colorado high country.
NOT GOOD ENOUGH
The opportunities created by the stem cell procedure allowed me and my two hiking buddies, my wife and my daughter, to enjoy some amazing hikes over the past 6 years, and I will always love those memories. Some of those trails are on my list to revisit because of how spectacular the memories were.
But… there’s a “But” coming…
As great as the outcomes were from the stem cell process, the procedure was not good enough for allowing me to achieve the ultimate hiking goal I’ve carried. That goal has been to get back to Longs Peak. Longs sits out there staring at me along the northern front range, challenging me… wondering if I have it in me to return. I was at the summit when I was young and stupid in the late 80’s and early 90’s, a time in my life when I had no appreciation for the accomplishment of getting to that summit.
In the years after the stem cell procedure, I would get online to see pictures of the Longs Peak trail… the Keyhole, the Trough, the Narrows… it all stirred my soul… I had to get back there.
In 2021, 2022, and again in 2024, my daughter and I made trips up the Longs Peak trail to see how far we could get… and really to see what kind of condition my knees were in. We got to the Chasm Lake Junction twice… still about 4 miles from the Summit. In 2022 we got to Granite Pass, about a mile from the Boulderfield which sits just below the Keyhole… and even then, that was close to 3 miles from the summit… the three hardest miles.
Each time, the hike back down was long and painful. Each time I wondered why I put myself through the pain of the hike, and honestly, each time I had to be mindful with most steps to ensure I could make it down safely. But each time the pain faded away, and once again I began entertaining thoughts of getting to the summit.
FACING MY LIMITATIONS
However, after the hike in 2024, I began to see it was not realistic for me to think I would ever get to the summit with my knee condition. I watched a YouTube video of the Narrows (Video of the Narrows), a section of the trail about 13,500 feet in altitude connecting the Trough with the Final Ascent, and came to grips with the idea that I could not accomplish this hike without first having knee replacement surgery… and even then, the surgery in itself was no guarantee I would be able to reach the summit. I was now into my 60’s and the reality is that there are many things older-me cannot do that younger-me could easily do. The question is… was summiting Longs Peak one of those things, or could I still do it? We never know that answer until we try, right?
TURNING TO FACE THE KNIFE
In February of this year, I stopped working out on my elliptical. The pain that came with the workouts was no longer worth it because it appeared I was causing more harm to my knee joint. I eventually concluded hiking in the 2025 season was not an option, and this pushed me over the edge to make a phone call.
I called an orthopedic surgeon and scheduled a consultation to discuss options with my knee. I already knew what my only option was, but that appointment was step one of my process.
A commitment was made; surgery was scheduled for early June. It was time to turn and face the knife I’ve dreaded facing over the past 10 years. It was time to face the rehab process that I was told would take 9-months to a year before I would be 100%… and that was only if I was willing to put in the work. Keep in mind here that I was not looking at a rehab process that would allow me to go to Walmart without a limp… I was looking at a rehab process that would allow me to return to Black Lake, to hike Druid Arch in Canyonlands, I was looking for a rehab process that would allow a 60+ year old guy to cheat the aging process and pursue summits that inspired my soul. It was time to turn and face those challenges… and that began with facing the knife.
WHAT IS THE POINT HERE?
Many of us have summits we desire to climb in our life. Some of us have actual physical summits, but most of us have those metaphorical summits I often talk about in this blog “Climbing Mountains”.
Sometimes we simply need to put the extra work in to prepare us for what is required to get to the summit, but for many of us, there may be a crucial step in the process we’ve avoided over the years, a painful process that has oftentimes caused us to put our summit on hold. We’ve wanted the summit… but we’ve wanted to avoid that step in the process even more.
I need to drive home another point here. For some of us (I think I’m being conservative by saying “some”), the idea of avoiding that “knife” in our own lives may have become so strong over the years that it’s actually caused us to make a change in the mountains we desire to climb.
PAUSE!
Please, just for a moment, think about that last statement. Turn down the noise of distraction around you. Give your heart a chance to speak in a way that your brain may hear. Is it possible that over the years, the idea of facing that “knife” in your own recovery process has come with such a fear that it became easier to simply find a different mountain to climb; a mountain that in reality was just a foothill compared with the mountain you once longed to climb?
I don’t know if that point resonates with anyone, but my experience has led me to believe certain things about life. Life can be harsh; life comes with resistance, with obstacles that can suck the life out of us, beat down that once adventurous spirit we had in our younger years. This is the coach in me speaking when I say this: “where we once played to win, we now play not to lose.” Does that resonate with any of you? Where you once took on life with an attitude of winning, do you now play not to lose?
Okay, let’s keep moving…
The metaphorical knife is often a much-needed part of the recovery process. If we don’t face the knife, we’ll never truly put ourselves in a position to fully recover. If I can use my 2015 story here as an example, without the knife we’ll always be reminded at every 90-degree turn in the sidewalk, we’ll always have to slow down and be careful at every curb we must step down from… we’ll be left to stare at that mountain summit through the truck windshield because we don’t have the capability of reaching the summit in our current condition. We never truly live the quality we desire until we make the choice to turn and face the “knife” (whatever that knife may represent in your own recovery process.
CLOSING – But there’s more to come
Wow! That was a lot of words! I hope the point didn’t get lost here. There is so much more I’m learning in my recovery. I hope you will find it challenging. There may be points that reappear in different ways throughout this series, but if so, it’s because we’re talking about recovery.
See Links below to other stories related to “The Things I’ve Learned in Rehab”.
LINK TO OTHER POSTS IN THIS SERIES:
- Part 2: Granting Access to the Wound
- Part 3: Oxycodone, Ice, and …
2 thoughts on “THE THINGS I’VE LEARNED IN REHAB – PART 1: Facing the Knife”