It is getting colder outside.  As of late, I have noticed a particular dryness during my morning constitutionals.

Wincing, waddling and veritable wheezing ensues.  My osteoarthritic knees seem embedded with knives and daggers.

Pain.

It has been foremost on my mind.  In fact, it has consumed my mind.  I can focus on nothing else.  Desperately I try to remember a time in which I led a relaxed, medicine-free, pain-free life ... (how lucky are those who do!) ... yet it seems this disease has overtaken even the recesses of my memory.

With pain comes its cousin, Sadness.  Even a member of the noble family of Canine cannot escape its weight bearing down.

My two-legged, arthritis-free pets have noticed.  I feel it in the way they gingerly pet me, hear it in their increasingly-cautious tones.

But I have not figured out how to respond.  Not yet.  For the moment, I feel lost.  Trapped, even.

The pain.

The sadness.