A year ago I walked up these stairs....

And I didn't come back down them for 3 or 4 days...I couldn't. I could barely walk to the bathroom and back.


This is the only picture of the stairs I could find, it's the picture we took before we bought the house and then renovated.

A retired Presbyterian Pastor and his wife had lived in this house for 38 years before we bought it. During their last years in the house they had installed chair lifts for her to use on these stairs and the ones to the basement also. They wanted to stay here that badly...we understood why after we moved in.


I loved the stairs, the beautiful wood and curve of the banister...just lovely. See the little phone nook...never did find a phone to fit that nook!


Getting back to my trip up the stairs....we had just come back from a 5 mile walk, I had drug myself up the last hill and barely made it to our driveway...I was in serious trouble. I'd always had one bad knee, one good knee. During the course of last summer, my other knee while laying over 100 bags of mulch in the back yard went out. So then I had a bad knee and a worse knee.


This is a bit of the yard that we had used all the mulch on. We bought this house with a level yard which we thought would be better on my knee.......we were wrong....now it was knees.

Somehow I got up the stairs and landed in bed...I was in so much pain, if I died right then and there it would be okay with me! Seriously! I'd already been in pain 24/7 anyway for a long time. How could it get worse!!!!

I borrowed some pain pills from Shawn.....big mistake....but when it's Friday and you can't get to the doctor until the next week, you do what you have to do! Had a reaction to the pain pills and got sicker. Real trouble, real pain, lots of it.

Finally got to the doctor and he wanted to start the process of knee replacement surgery. Oh dear! Oh dear! Oh!

An 83 year old lady in the Tai Chi class we were in at our gym had already told me about magnets. I'd purchased knee braces with magnets in them and they had helped. I didn't want the surgery. So I just kept going. Could barely go 2.0 on the treadmill, but slowly and I mean slowly, I worked my way up to 3.0 and stayed there.

We finally made the decision the two sets of stairs were not working out for me. We knew then that all the hard work we had done in the last two years renovating this house....the beautiful garden...our work was done there. We had knocked out walls and made doors, put in built-in cabinets, painted every wall, ceiling and trim, redid floors, bought new high end stainless steel appliances, brick patio, thousands of dollars on the yard....sigh...We loved this house!!! Really, really loved it!!

Our son Rich talked to me through my tears, saying, "mom, don't love something that can't love you back."

In just two short years we had built so many memories in that house already!! Pain, pain, pain in my heart and in Dick's. We did the right thing, we sold the house, in a tight market.... in 7 days...I was hoping it would take months...7 days!

We moved into the patio home and my knees did feel a little better, still pain 24/7, but better. Several months later enter www.thedailyplate.com after losing 20 pounds something started to happen....way less knee pain. Now 35 pounds lighter, the knee pain is gone. I'm walking up hills, down hills and this morning Dick and I walked 5.88 miles pretty quickly....I feel like I could walk 5 more....oh my goodness!! Oh my goodness!!

Sometimes you have to give up something you love, let it go, and something 10 times better comes your way. Oh my! The future looks really bright! What great things will tomorrow bring! Can't wait to find out! God Bless!