Today, I didn’t just say it. I acted on it.

When you’re chronically sick, and when you’re so tired all the time even ordinary activity is too much for you, it’s easy to be resigned — to crawl up your own anal orifice and die, to use a metaphor borrowed from Vonnegut. 

Well, today was all about moving proactively into the future, reclaiming at least some of the health I’ve lost, and celebrating the new and wonderful surprises that life offers even in the twilight years.

This afternoon, I met with a health care provider who I think of more as a dear friend — physical therapist Dan Murray. He was one of “the Dans” who guided me through the demise of the cartilage in my left knee, and the replacement of the joint with a titanium model.

My right knee is starting to bother me. It’s nowhere near as bad as my left knee was in December 2016, when I artived in Arizona unable to walk, spent a chunk of my vacation either in the ER or zoned out on painkillers and came home with an immobilized and a set of crutches. 

This time I want to get ahead of it, rather than waiting until I’m crippled. With my heartbeat dependent on a pacemaker and my lifelong need for blood thinners, surgery is not an option this time — and Dan doesn’t think I’ll need it. With exercise (some of it in the water) to boost my balance, strength and stamina, Dan thinks I can get back my ability to walk faster, stand longer, and avoid falling. 

The other pro-active, forward-thinking thing I did today was attend the opening reception for the Gilda’s Club annual Community Art Show. This is my fourth show — and if you had told me five years ago that I would use the word “artist” to help define my core identity, I would have snorted and scoffed. But making art has become how I heal, how I cope, how I express myself and how I experience the world. All art is therapy.

The two pieces I have in the show are:

• “Gently Rolling Prairie,” an acrylic painting on a 12-inch round piece of cardboard that came with a frozen pizza — framed with a wooden hoop normally used for floral arrangements.

• “Storm at the Fair,” an abstract piece of acrylic paint poured on stretched canvas. This is the first time I have shown something I made at Gilda’s Club, as part of the therapeutic art program 

FORWARD!

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