Damn These Cursed Hips!

Here it is, 2:15am and I'm blogging when I should be sleeping.

Unfortunately, my hips have other ideas.

We went to the Annual Awards Dinner at John's skeet club last night.

This is an event that we always enjoy; an evening of silly fun and great food when medals are handed out for competitive skeet, trap, and sporting clays.

It's a pot luck dinner so there's always way too much food, but oh what a selection!

John's truck causes me distress; it's a rougher ride than my car and by the time we got to the club, my right hip was quite unhappy.

After about ten minutes of standing around chatting, I had had the biscuit.

Just couldn't bear it any longer.

Time to sit down.

Yeh right! 

Remember, this was day two of the next reduced dose of Cesamet (now at 2.5 mg of the stuff each day).

The party wasn't even officially started and I was already in deep doo-doo.

We quietly got a bag of ice from the freezer and I sat and iced my hip right there in the club.

I did!   "A woman has just got to do what a woman has to do," that's what I always say.

That kept me going for a while.

As I went to take my place in the food line, one of the ladies, seeing my difficulty, asked if I had hurt myself.  When I assured her that I had not, that I simply had 'bad hips,' she asked if I was waiting to have them replaced.

This is a question I am asked far too often, and it depresses me but I once again explained that, no, I'm not a candidate for that because my problem is bursitis rather than degeneration.

But that discussion wasn't nearly as depressing as the exchange that I had with one of the shooters who enthusiastically came over to greet me.

"Bonnie, are you still enjoying retirement?" 

"You bet," I said, "loving every minute of it."

"Me too," he said, "but I took early retirement. I left when I was 62."

 "I retired a lot before that," I said.

"Oh yeh?" he queried, with a really surprised look on his face (he knows I've been retired for a few years).

"Well, yes.  I'm not yet 60 and I've been retired for a while now."

"Oh," he said very quietly, with a really embarrassed look on his face (but he didn't skulk away, to his credit).

So apparently it was assumed that I was 65 years old when I retired four years ago.

Oh oh.

I either looked really good for my assumed age or really awful for my real age back in 2006 (and perhaps still do for all I know).

As an aside, the foregoing leads me to a short discussion John and I had a while back about my cane and a walker and such issues.  The psychological barrier as such.  He asked why I was so reluctant to use my cane and why it was such a difficult step for me to accept the use of a walker.

"Because when I use my cane, people treat me differently and I don't like it.  For some reason, if I have my cane with me, I'm talked to as though I'm my grandmother.  When I don't have my cane, I'm addressed like I used to be when I was working."

It's bizarre, I know.  But it's what I've noticed and I'm not ready to be my grandmother quite yet. 

Anyway, by the time John had finished eating, I asked him to retrieve my cushion from the truck to give me extra padding to sit on.  I use on an extra cushion in the truck and it comes in very handy for just such occasions.  A duplicate cushion lives in my car to be called into duty for restaurant and doctor visits, or anywhere we go that has uncomfortable seating.

As he slid the cushion under me, it was like nirvana; the relief was incredible.

Until that pillow was slid under my butt, I had not been aware of just how uncomfortable I had been.

I mean, I knew I hurt; I just didn't know how badly.

Fortunately for me, the remainder of the evening involved my sitting so I didn't have to reveal to anyone else just how much trouble I was truly experiencing.

The awards were presented and everyone did their bit to prove that the world is a stage and everyone's a comedian.

In fact, someone had brought what I'm told was a delectable dessert, known as 'Sex in a Pan' and I won't repeat some of the lines that were offered in relation to that dish (but they were priceless)!

Then came time to leave.

And my hip decided that it wasn't going to let me walk.

At all.

Anywhere.

Pain went shooting down my leg to the tips of my toes.

My cane, of course, is still living in my car (I haven't yet bought that second cane that will live in John's truck).

With John's help, I managed to get to the truck and then I waited there while John went back into the clubhouse for the cushion that I had forgotten to bring with me (my poor cushions have been left behind many places).

The half hour drive home was excruciatingly long.

Both hips were iced immediately that I got home and I broke down and took a Codeine Contin before I hit the sack (I would prefer to be fully off the Cesamet before taking the Codeine Contin again but ...)

That, my friends, was at 10:30pm last night.

And I'm sitting in my living room, icing my hips again, watching Olympic coverage re-runs at 3:00am.

Damn, these cursed hips!