Twenty six plus years living in one place meant that packing would not be easy. There was so much to weed through. Fortunately, I did not have much storage space so the “stuff” I accumulated could have been worse. I was determined that if I had not touched something, used or worn something or had not seen something in the last year, I did not need it. I stuck with this and yet I still had lots of “stuff”.

So I started the packing process and the impossible task of finding Faron a new home. I reached out to the Cat Connection for help. I insisted that Faron would never go into a shelter or a cage of any kind. He would only go to a home. The Cat Connection does not usually assist in re-locating but they made an exception for my exceptional cat. In the meantime, my friends (and next door neighbors) said that they would foster Faron until a perfect home could be found for him. I was grateful to the Cat Connection and to my friends.

It’s not like packing 26 years of my life while trying to find a new home for Faron wasn’t enough. And then it happened. And I have no idea how. I was standing in my guest room, just looking at the space I had to use as a staging area for the moving boxes. I had nothing in my hands…and nothing up my sleeve. I was just standing there. And then I bent over at the waist. I don’t remember why. But an awful thing happened. My right knee made a grinding, popping and crunching sound and the entire knee moved to the left. And then it moved back to the right. And it hurt. But it was nothing. It wasn’t swelling too much. It was fine. It had to be. But it wasn’t. Not even a little fine.

I continued what I was doing, moving stuff around, packing stuff up. The knee kept swelling but it was tolerable. I was ignoring it. I had to. I went to bed and when I woke up in the morning, it was still swollen and it did not feel good. But I got up and went to work. I had a busy day on tap and I did not have time for this. While walking through a room at work, my knee suddenly gave out and I almost fell. I was able to grab onto a piece of furniture to stay up. Ouch! That hurt. But I kept on, I was busy. Three more times during the day, my knee gave out. And each time I ignored it and went about my day. But as the work day was coming to an end, the knee was swelling like mad and the pain was getting unbearable. I was okay if I was walking but if I sat for any period of time and then got up….yeah, not so much! I finished the day at work and went home. I barely made it up the stairs into my apartment. I changed my clothes and then I called my neighbor and asked her to drive me to the emergency room. I could not be in denial any longer.