cabbitzilla | Clumsiness... as a Blessing?

Wow. Three posts from me in the same day. You'd think I were awake or something.

Yes, it turns out that clumsiness can in fact be a good thing. When I managed to re-injure my knee early last week, it dropped me into a pretty deep despair... one that was complicated severely by -again- being hurt and not knowing why.

And now... now I know why the re-injury happened, and quite possibly how I managed to blow the knee out in the first place.

There're a handfull of folks who read my journal who've spent enough time around me to have noticed that typically there is no bounce as I walk. I've been told I resemble a wall somehow given life; while there's some side-to-side sway, there's no height variations from mid-chest and upwards. It was described as 'implacable' by a former boyfriend, and listed as the primary reason why I was being dumped.

My walk was 'creepy'. Not an adjective I'm particularly fond of, but there it is.

When I finished the director's commentary for The Incredibles, I grabbed my cane and wobbled to the bathroom, then decided to go have a smoke while I was up. When I went to put my coat on, I managed to snag the cane and fling it all the way into the kitchen. Don't ask me how, I just know that's where it ended up. Great. The knee is back to holding me, and very very carefully I made my way towards the kitchen. With last Tuesday's fall in mind, I've become VERY conscious of what is moving where, and why, and for how long; I'm NOT going back on those God damned crutches again. And that led to a discovery, just a split second before the pain hit.

In my normal walk, I lock my right knee as I move.

Rather than the 3 or so seconds of dumb staring at the joint and soaking in the pain from last time, I simply allowed myself to fold up. I landed seated on the kitchen floor, already probing carefully at the knee. No further damage this time, blessedly, and my movement capabilities haven't been diminished. But I sat there for a while, trying to puzzle out why on earth I would be habitually locking that knee. I came up with a couple of reasons, and the truth is probably a combination of them:

Way back in 1983, I blasted the hell out of my left knee. In the process of mowing a neighbor's lawn, I hit (and angered) a sizeable nest of ground bees. In my flailing retreat, I hauled ass for the house trying to shuck out of my clothes and get them away from me, and managed to trip myself. My then 275lb weight landed solely on the left knee... on the pavement. It tore the left knee up to the point that I missed two parades for Marching Band that year. Like an idiot, I refused to go to the hospital. It took forever to 'heal', and that knee's been 'bad' ever since.
In 1986, I began doing padded weapons combat, and began some light training in fencing (you want to see something ludicrous? Imagine a 6'3" 290# fencer). During one of the practice sessions, I managed to wrench the left knee badly enough that I was on a cane for nearly a month and a half. This, apparently, is when my walk changed. There was a notable difference in reaction to me walking down a crowded hallway after I was able to put the cane away, but it wasn't enough that the folks close to me were commenting on it.
In the late 1989 or so, I started doing bouncer and crowd control gigs. After having the left leg fold up on me, I got in the habit of actually -leading- with the left, leaving the right braced for impact until it needed to move. This was where friends started asking me if I was angry any time I walked towards them. Apparently my walk had moved into 'stalk'.
In the early 90's, my work turned into the skip tracer gig that ended so disastrously. Working with fairly large calibre weaponry reinforced the 'brace with the right' habits.
Fast forward fifteen years. Fifteen years of favoring the left leg, keeping the right knee locked until absolutely necessary, and taking all of the pounding of my now-340# frame. Add casual stroll down normal, carpeted hallway. Stir. And shazam, it's an ER visit.

Subnote of major amusement here. My spell check routine wants to turn 'shazam' into 'shalom'. *wry smile* No, I'm not Jewish, but it interests me more than a little. Anyway....

Overjoyed at having use of the leg again, long engraved walk pattern reasserts itself. Now, without an ACL, locking the knee leads to hyper-extending it, putting me back on the floor.

So now I'm trying to figure out how to reprogram myself to prevent doing this -again-. Once I retrieved my cane, a couple of careful steps showed that I was trying to lock the right knee before any weight went on it. I'm overriding that at the moment, but I'm scared half to death I'm going to forget. o.o