I'm flagging, my friends

When I was a youngster, I used to tear down our block, jump over our neighbor's small evergreen tree (which grew from about two feet to four feet tall in the years that I did this), run diagonally across our front lawn and then leap over four stairs to our front porch. I did this routinely and with much delight.

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One day my foot slipped at the bottom of the stairs, and my knee slammed into the edge of one of the stairs. Actually, it was the top of my tibia that met the stair. The whole knee area was a swollen mess for a while, but eventually it shrank to its normal size, except for a bump on the tibia.

Since then, the bump hasn’t caused me no problems unless I try walking on my knees or do some kind of dance activity that uses the knee joint in ways it's really not supposed to be used. And I went for 49 years without further injury to that spot.

Unfortunately, last month I injured the knee in the very same place. The leg can bear weight, so my doctor deduced no bone is broken. The skin is healing, the swelling is going down, but the joint is not working well yet. The bump on my tibia is a bit larger; the soft tissue around it is stressed. To avoid pain, I have to poke along like my arthritic grandmother used to do.

This has slowed me down more than I would have ever thought. Last week I had oral surgery, too, which has slowed me down as well. Recovery from that is going very well, though. No problems there (except eating is difficult for the time being).

So, my friends, I'm flagging for a bit. I'm of necessity focused on healing. I'm down but not out. I'll be back to posting soon.