The "Big Day" Is At Hand

Tomorrow at 9:00 AM I will, if all goes as scheduled, have my left knee replaced.  We have scurried about the last couple of weeks with stocking up on groceries and prescriptions, supplies, getting medical details handled, and everything that goes into preparing for a period of disability and post surgical care, to be ready for success.  t and sue have as always worked hard to take better care of me than I deserve.

Going into this I have a few thoughts.

We have just completed 10 years of the three of us together real time, here in our home.  What a wonderful trip it has been (joyous,tumultuous, tough, easy, and always loving) and this latest hurdle will usher in the next chapter for us all.

Saturday morning will be t's and my 11th wedding anniversary.  We have celebrated already with gifts and dinners out, etc., imagining that I may be somewhat less than festive the first full day of hosting my new titanium knee, but nonetheless it will be this milestone of one of the most magic gifts life has ever granted me......my t, her love, and our never ending joyous conversation that has continued between us since we first met on a blind date November 29 1998.  We will prattle on together for a long time yet to come...........just now with my having two good knees for the first time since she has known me.

Some here have commented that they have read us here on this Blog since my first knee replacement back in July 2005.  This this time there are several really helpful contrasts that have me approaching this with far greater serenity and optimism that I did almost 7 years ago.

I weighed 330 pounds in 2005 when I had my first knee replacement.  This morning I weighed 157 pounds, and I am in great physical shape both in terms of overall health and fitness.  I have completed four 25 miles bike rides in the past week. I can only imagine how much easier this recovery and rehabilitation will be than in 2005.

In 2005, I went into this experience drunk.  I drank heavily everyday approaching the surgery............hell the night before the surgery, and was an emotional mess as I went into the surgical ordeal.  I was brave and toughed my way through it but I was a mess.  I am today 513 days sober, and am now not only at peace with that, but pleased and proud to be sober.  I am approaching this surgery serenely.  I am not panicked.  I understand the medical risks of all this better than most people who undergo it.  I have  a wonderful surgeon who has been tremendously successful....for me....for us with my previous knee replacement and shoulder replacement (a year ago), and with t's knee replacement a year and a half ago.  I am well.  I have done this before and quite successfully.  I "go after" rehabilitation voraciously, having a Masters degree in that field, and, by personality, wanting to reassert control over my life, I will embrace the struggle of rehabilitation that will create the magic of a healthy knee for me and for us.  My knee has not been healthy since I was a boy.  In a matter of months it will be.

I am enjoying a spiritual awakening to shamanism.  It began with my own soul retrieval a few months ago which led me to encourage t and sue to undergo the same healing experience.  We all three are looking forward to our first Way of the Shaman workshop this August.  I don't know how I know this is real, and is right for me....other than that I know.  I have read and studied a good bit about shamanic practice now and the intellectual exercise of reviewing it anthropologically, psychologically, and in terms of religious history has been some of the more challenging and rewarding intellectual explorations I have had in recent decades.  I look forward to its being the fount of my future.  It is already becoming the means of my reestablishing my leadership in our family....a new Dominance that is not based on position status, that includes SM play as an expression of our relatedness but that is not a basis of some Dominance/submission exchange, but a new fuller reality that is based upon our all following down a path together towards a spiritual awareness that I have begun and that we will all pursue together.

I am looking forward with a mean little kid's glee to checking in at 6:00 AM at the registration desk of the very Catholic hospital where this surgery will take place, and when they ask my religious preference telling them Shaman.  I am imagining that they might well have a cadre of Sisters of Mercy positioned outside my/our hospital room chanting rosaries throughout our stay to prevent any possible infestation of demonic contamination in their holy halls.:) We shall see.  It should, if nothing else, provide some entertaining comic relief.

I don't post here enough, but I am un-endingly amazed and grateful for the interest, time, and genuine caring so many here have invested in us.  Thank you.

I'll be writing again soon to tell you of the positive outcome of all this either in person or via sue or t.

All the best,

Tom

Go confidently in the direction of your dreams.  Live the life you've imagined.