"crepitus
mass noun
Medicine
1. A grating sound or sensation produced by friction between bone and cartilage or the fractured parts of a bone.
Origin: Early 19th century: from Latin, from crepare ‘rattle’."
(https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/crepitus , accessed 10/15/2018)
At least twice weekly I hear it. After the pop of my shoulders as my arms stretch upward, the rustling crepitus makes itself known in the
rotation of my upper back
circling of my pendulous head, first clockwise, then counter
slight popping of my wrists as my fists rotate
rustling of my lower vertebrae as my hips circle this way and that
not unlike the leaves that crunch underfoot on my porch.
It's so loud in my head, this grating, rubbing noise as I move my joints, neck to ankles--the soundtrack to the autumn of my years.
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| Photo by Symphony999 [CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], from Wikimedia Commons |
My knees have been popping every time I kneel down for years. (Like, seriously, it started when I was 27. My fifth graders use to giggle at me and tell me I was older than 27 because of it.) Other parts of me crackle as I move. The joy of growing older.
ReplyDeleteThis sounds like it hurts!
ReplyDeleteI don't have that ... but night sweats! Maybe all the sweat is lubricating my joints somehow. Got to embrace it == love your connection to the sounds and mood of autumn.
ReplyDeleteOhhhhh I love what you do here-- "the autumn of my years" the leaves and all the sounds your body makes.... As my mom likes to say, growing older is not for sissies.
ReplyDeleteVery cool how you likened the sounds of your body to the autumn leaves and then the autumn of your life. I have a lot of crepitus going on here too!
ReplyDeleteFirst thought: That time of year thou mayst in me behold ... my favorite of Shakespeare's sonnets, #73, with its autumn imagery on growing old. That rattling - alas! - our boughs of "bare ruined choirs" as The Bard would say. Yet in the lament there's something beautiful - like those glorious leaves in your photo. Life and love and so many things become ever more precious to us as we age; they glow within us. And how I love that compelling new word!
ReplyDelete