Should I kneel to pray?

When I had my arthroscopic knee surgery in 2018, the surgeon told me to never kneel or squat again, unless I wanted an emergency knee replacement.  So, I stopped kneeling to prey.  This was a personal decision that was constantly assailed, unconsciously for the most part, by those around me.  I was in the high council, for example, and the tradition in that group was to kneel on the floor in prayer to begin each meeting.  It wasn't a big deal to anybody there, but I was odd man out, which is always uncomfortable.  The temple is another place where my resolve was tested.  Kneeling at the alter is part of the ceremony.  True, if I asked, they would pull the kneeling pad away and put a chair up to the altar.  They were fine with doing that.  But doing that, disrupts the flow of what we were doing.  I don't like doing that, so I didn't like not kneeling.  Gradually I stopped asking for special consideration and just knelt, in spite of the fact that it is very hard on the knee, especially on an injured knee like mine.  The result is that my knee got more fragile.

   When we moved into the Mission home, I was fascinated by the orchard.  It is on a very, very steep hill, but I grew up around steep hills and spent many happy days scrambling up, down, and sideways on them.  I didn't think much about doing it here.  But a couple weeks ago, I put some jugs on the apple trees on the hill.  The jugs had a hole cut in the side and held apple cider vinegar to attract moths, which are the biggest pest of apples in the U.S.  They drown in the jugs before they can lay their eggs on the apples.  I didn't know if coddling moths are common here, but it is a simple, inexpensive trick and I decided to try it.  Unfortunately, going up and down that hill to hang the jugs, I encountered a particularly steep section of the hill where I couldn't keep my feet under me until I braced a foot against a tree trunk.  I had no pain, but later that day my knee was sore.  It was sore for the next couple of days.  I talked to the mission doctor about it and he had me do some simple tests to ensure that the knee was still stable.  It was.  He told me to be extra careful, and among other things, I swore off going into the orchard.  Now, the cherries are ripe and I am not even going to go get a bowlful.

  Wednesday, I had started carrying a pair of walking sticks with me to take some pressure off my sore knee.  I figured it would get better sooner if I put less pressure on it.  The mission home is four stories, and we live in all four.  Our clothes are in the top floor, and the laundry room and the fridge with my pepsi is in the basement, so going up and down stairs is part of everything.  My surgeon also told me to avoid stairs after my surgery.  He recommended we move into a single story house.  He also said going up stairs is good for your knees, but going down puts tremendous strain on them.  Well, I was going up the stairs, with both walking sticks in my right hand, and the stair railing in my left.  I was trying to put no pressure on my very sore knee.  Then I remembered him saying that going up is good, and I consciously took less of my weight on stick and rail as I stepped up.  Suddenly I heard a loud POP!  MY knee bent sideways, and the pain was huge.  I instantly took all pressure off that leg and just stood there in a red cloud of pain.  It was several minutes before I could continue, and I couldn't stand to put any pressure on my right leg at all.  I put all my weight on the walking sticks as I hopped the few steps to our bedroom and flopped on the bed.

    Liz and all the Croatian missionaries except me were down in Plitvitza to tour the waterfalls that day, so I laid on the bed waiting all day.  I hadn't gone because my knee was so sore.  In fact, last weekend, we visited the grave of Kresimir Cosic, the former BYU basketball player from Croatia, who is very famous in the former Yugoslavia countries because of his leading the Yugoslav team to an Olympic gold medal, among other things.  We were strolling along and when we came to a downhill section my knee immediately told me no more downhill.  It almost gave out on me.  So I walked back to the entrance and waited for everybody else.  And that is why I didn't go to Plitvitza.

  As I lay on the bed in pain, I thought about the possible outcomes.  Major surgery means going home for senior missionaries.  If the pop had signaled a break of one of the ligaments of the knee, it would mean the end of our Grand Adventure.  I remembered seeing crutches in the mission office, so I texted Liz to ask her to stop by and get those crutches for me.

   When they got back, Liz had the crutches, bless her heart.  President Melonakos gave me a blessing and we went to the emergency room at the nearest hospital.  Croatia has excellent medical care, but emergency rooms are the worst part of any medical system.  We started at the triage desk first, of course.  The very thought of triage give me the willies!  It was invented for medical treatment in battle.  Its basic tenant is to focus care on the ones who need it most, so battle wounded are separated into three groups:  those who are going to die anyway and only need someone to hold their hand - they go to the chaplain;  those who will survive with simple, or no treatment are put in a safe place to wait;  and the third group gets the doctor's attention.  It's the thought of the first group that scares me.  When the doctors are overworked, more people get shunted into the first two groups so the doctors can keep up with the third group.

  The emergency room was packed with people waiting their turn.  Some things are very different here.  First thing I noticed was that fairly often medical people wheeled a bed with a patient on it, through the waiting room.  They do wheel patients around in the U.S. too, but never through the waiting room.  Second, the place was not inspiring for cleanliness.  We are in the middle of a pandemic (admittedly it has largely spared Croatia) but the screening seemed kind of half-hearted.  They had a window we had to go to, first.  A lady inside stuck her hand through the window to take my temperature with an IR thermometer.  Fine, so far.  But then we entered the waiting room and there was a bottle of hand sanitizer there, but nobody to make sure we used it, nor even a sign saying to do so.  The place was fairly full, and we waited there for a couple of hours without seeing anybody sanitize chair arms, countertops, hand rails, or any other high-use surfaces.  We were called in to talk to an overworked doctor who did the standard knee assessment, and ordered an X-ray to make sure no bones were broken.  The X-ray people were very efficient and fast.  Back to the doctor who told me he didn't see anything too serious, but we needed an MRI to make sure and then we'd know what to do.  The good news was the cost.  254 kuna, which is $36.35 American.  Amazing!  The other good news:  I got codeine, which let me sleep most of the night.

    Next day Sister Melonakos and Liz enlisted the help of some of the missionaries and they brought a recliner up to our room for me.  YES!  They also put some outdoor furniture on our little balcony, which is nice, because I had nothing to do but wait on Thursday.

  Friday, we went to a Catholic hospital for my MRI.  It was SO much better than the ER!  They had a nurse dedicated to checking people to prevent COVID-19 victims from entering the general hospital area.  She was thorough, efficient, and fast.  That was nice.  After a short wait, we got in and got my MRI in a modern Siemens machine.  That cost over 2,000 kuna, which is still very inexpensive by U.S. standards.
    I am the mission nurse's technical assistant responsible for uploading medical imaging into the church's medical system.  It was my first upload and it worked flawlessly.  Now  everybody's going to want me to do it.

    Today, I continue to wait.  Liz was going to go to a baptism down in Rijeka today, but it was postponed at the last minute.  So she is going shopping with a single senior sister.