For all of my friends and readers who have missed me, this is why.

I’ve been confined for quite some time and have to use a walker because of the terrible pain in my knee and hip.

I don’t get out of the house except to go to my doctor’s and to the hospital for my many tests.

I spend a lot of my time watching TV and reading.

I do find by looking out my window how busy Orchard Street is during the day.

Many cars going by from each direction.

There are lots of walkers, some with children and others who are walking their dogs.

Quite a few bicycles.

One has a three-wheeler and can carry her child in the rear seat and sometimes carries groceries in it, also.

Then there are the young boys headed up the street on their way up to the place where they skate board up by the cemetery.

Occasionally, the ambulance comes by my house on Orchard Street on a run from where they are stationed on Prairie Ronde.

There is one elderly gentleman who goes by our house quite a few times a day and this is every day.

He goes to the north and then later comes by going towards town.

Me being an old walker, I wish I could walk with him.

Recently, as I was getting in the car on our driveway, this man saw us and stopped.

I asked him if he knew who I was. He said yes, and he reads my column. He said he lives down the block from my house.

I didn’t ask him his name, but told him I’d like to have him stop in some time to have a talk about his daily walk to how far he goes.

I told him Peg and I used to walk three miles nearly every day a few years ago before I became disabled.

A lot of my readers don’t know that I have been laid up for quite some time with terrible pain in my knee and hip and this put me using a walker.

It is a nice one with wheels and brakes.

It even has a seat to sit on.

But I only get out of the house to go to the hospital for my many tests and to my several doctors.

After having three different times of having cortisone shots into my knee and also steroids shot into my back, and using several strong drugs for pain, I have found none that work.

My next try is to be a thing called spinal cord stimulation, where two small wires will be put up my spine and will be hooked to a small battery put in my body.

I will have two controls — one to charge the battery from outside in my hand.

There will be a control that will let me control the pain.

It looks like a TV remote.

I’m sure hoping after over a year my pain will let me live again.

Wish me well when I have this done.

 

“Cardinal Charlie” Gill writes a nostalgic weekly column about growing up in the Grand Old City.

Email him at cardinalcharlie@hotmail.com.