Trial By Staircase

Here's something new. I can now walk up the stairs without support.

Ever since my knees started hurting so much, I've been helping myself up the stairs. At the very least, I've been leaning against the walls to balance myself. It's a sort of lean-with-the-elbow-and-take-a-step kind of process.

(I'm not entirely sure why it's helpful because pressing sideways against the wall can't possibly reduce the vertical load on my body, can it? I guess I could be pushing down a bit, because pressing against the wall produces some friction that would keep my hand and arm in place while I push myself up. It doesn't feel like that though. In addition, whatever sideways force I get from pushing against the wall must be matched by an equal and opposite force against my feet, otherwise I'd push myself completely away from the wall. But this force has to be transmitted through my body, so by pushing against the wall, I must be increasing the forces going through my body, not decreasing them. My best guess is that by leaning I change the way my body stabilizes my knee joints, probably by bringing the larger leg muscles to bear on the problem.)

Often, I use the hand rails to push or pull myself up the stairs, using my arms to take some of the load off my legs. Since humans stopped swinging through the trees several million years ago, this is probably not a healthy way to use my arm muscles and joints. I've been noticing some pain in my shoulders.

However, a few days ago I was coming up the front stairs and I decided to try coming up the stairs without holding on to anything. I just forced myself up the stairs to the third floor by pumping my legs—you know, like most people do—and it worked. By worked I mean that my knees didn't hurt. Not at all. Not even the next day.

I wouldn't want to start climbing a lot of stairs, because that would obviously still hurt, but this is an important change. I used to sort of save-up trips outside, to the car or the dumpster or the basement, to minimize the number of trips up and down the stairs. The question "Will I have to climb the stairs for this?" was a meaningful part of planning my day. Now, not so much.