Growing Pains

The Boy had a doctor's appointment yesterday with the orthopedist (the muscle/bone doctor--did I get that spelling right? If I wrote foot doctor, I meant the other!) He's been having knee pain, in both knees, for a few months now. Initially, we did the ice, ibuprofen, heat, warm bath soaks, etc...but to no success. Then, we consulted with our pediatrician, who said after doing those things without improvement, we should seek out the help of a specialist. So, we made our appointment about 6 weeks ago (really, why does it take so long to get in with those specialist guys!) and finally had our consultation yesterday.
The doctor was great. He had a really nice manner with both me and the Boy. He asked a few questions of the Boy about where, when, how the pain is, etc...and then turned to me. "Has he had any growth spurts lately?" Um, yeah, if you consider putting on 30 pounds and growing 6 inches in less than a year a growth spurt. "Yes." Then he asked, "How about shoes? Has he gone through a few shoe sizes in the past year or so?" A few? Are you kidding? This is the same child for whom I had to buy two new pairs of black dress shoes for band and altar serving in less than 3 months because the first ones were TWO sizes too small! "As a matter of fact, he has." He then performed a few assessments in the form of stretching, reaching and bending. Just as quickly as he did so, he then gave his diagnosis, "Well, here's what it is. His bones are growing faster than his muscles. This is causing him to have pain in his knees from the weakness in the muscles that haven't caught up to the bone growth yet." He presented us with a sheet of exercises to do, prescribed the use of knee braces during sports and said that in six weeks he should be healed. He also told us that the pain could return if the Boy experiences another big growth spurt, but that once he is finally done growing, he'll be pain-free. He made a big point of telling the Boy, however, that if he only followed these directions a *little bit*, he'd only feel a *little bit* better.
So, we discussed this in the car. We talked about how important it would be to make time for these exercises over the next six weeks and being disciplined enough to follow through with them every day in order to get rid of the pain. As we talked, we realized that six weeks from now, is basically Easter Sunday. And then, it hit me. As my son committed to the discipline of his knee regimine for the rest of this Lenten season, I realized that in doing so, his body and soul would emerge from Lent to be healed by Easter. Hallelujah!