step backwards

Today has been a sucky day. The suckiness was compunded by the fact that the "loaner knee" [think 'loaner car'--it's a beat up old knee sent out to anyone whose knee is in the shop] that my prosthetist installed on my leg yesterday is confused.

For whatever reason this knee has a few wires crossed. It thinks that when I step down on my toe I'm really stepping down on my heel. So everytime I take a step it hesitates and locks. It doesn't make me fall, but it's an odd sensation that makes me feel like me knee is about the bend the wrong direction.

So added to the fact that I was up almost the whole night last night writing papers, and I'm still jetlagged, and my kids are stressed about school, and John has had to compensate for my lack of mobility this week, etc...Everytime I take a step it literally feels like a step backward rather than forward. Also, my leg is sans skin right now and there's a big sticker running down the front of my metallic blue shin that says SERVICE. As if I don't know that this is the 'service' knee. As if I need to announce this to every passersby. Like it isn't hard anough having to teach a class to 60 undergrads when I can't even take a confident step and I've got such a bizarre sticker on my leg. As if I really needed that today.

I think I came the closest yet to throwing in the towel. To saying that grad school isn't worth it. To saying that I want to curl up with my favorite sweater and a trashy novel and STOP TRYING SO HARD.

A part of me wanted to go up to my teachers and tell them how today really sucked and I can't walk and I'm tired and don't we all just have days like these and do they mind if I'm not at my best today and can I turn in my assignments late or can I just take today off? But then that other part of me that listens to excuses from my students and rolls my eyes at their 'illnesses' or their computer snafus, or whatever, that part of my realized that I couldn't go to my profs with an excuse. I just can't tell them about what it's like to have a broken knee, to hardly be able to walk, to feel frustrated and ashamed by this dorky loaner.

I can't tell them that it's just not my fault that today sucks.

BTW, just now I peeled off the SERVICE sticker. It almost made me feel better.