Last night I noticed that my leg didn’t seem to be charging correctly–the microprocessor in my bionic knee needs to ‘charge’ every 30 hours or so, or it runs out of juice. The charging cable that I use for the knee has some simple LEDs that indicate whether it’s charging and how much juice is left in the battery. And last night one of those lights (the one that indicates whether it’s charging) didn’t seem to be working. But it was late, so I plugged it in and figured that the light was broken and all was ok.
But of course it wasn’t. When I donned my leg this morning I realized the battery was completely dead. Ugh.
I have a second charger cord, but it was already packed in one of the moving boxes, and I wasn’t sure which one. And, it seemed as though the problem might not be the charger but the leg itself. I started panicking a bit, thinking that I’d gotten some sand in the computery-parts when I went to the beach a few days ago. And I was already imagining that this uber-busy week was going to get a lot more crazy if I had to get a ‘loaner’ knee and send mine back to the plant for servicing.
But…after about 20 minutes I found the other charger and the microprocessor seems to be taking a charge just fine now (fingers crossed).
Sometimes I resent my reliance on technology–I don’t want to be so physically dependent on cords and batteries and computers. But I also fought for years to acquire this technology for myself, knowing that this type of knee would give me the mobility that I craved. Recently I read a Journal entry that I wrote just after I got my first bionic knee. I was traveling in Paris for the first time and found that navigating the uneven cobblestones was a breeze with the new knee, and I knew that if I had analog parts that I would have probably fallen repeatedly because of the uneven pavement. I felt so fortunate to have access to the technology that gave me mobility under those circumstances. And I still do, even if it means that my Monday needs a bit of a ‘re-boot.’
