Not Ready for a Walker: A Folding Cane Story

Fourteen stairs. Carpeted, narrow, and they lead to the bedroom I have slept in for thirty-one years. Most of my life I went up them without thinking about it. Then one Tuesday in September 2025 my right knee decided it had opinions, and I stood at the bottom landing with both hands on the rail, doing arithmetic about whether I really needed the book that was upstairs.

I am Joan Petrakis. I am sixty-four and I live in Hendersonville, North Carolina. I retired after thirty-one years running a school cafeteria, which means three decades on a tile kitchen floor lifting stock pots and milk crates, and my knees have kept the receipts. Osteoarthritis in the right knee, diagnosed at fifty-nine. A lower back that stiffens up if I stand too long or garden too hard. My husband Gus is sixty-seven and in better shape than I am, which he is gracious enough not to mention.

What I want to tell you about is a cane. Specifically the HurryCane Freedom Edition, the foldable one with the T handle that has stood by my front door for fourteen months. Not because a cane is exciting. Because of what I was doing instead of using one.

Here is what I was doing. I walked from the kitchen counter to the sink with one hand flat on the counter. Then from the couch to the hallway with one hand on the wall. At the Saturday farmers market I found a bench every twenty minutes and pretended to be interested in the view. I told myself I was managing fine. What I was actually doing was shrinking my life by about one room a year.

The word I could not get past was walker. My mother had one at the end, and in my head those two objects are not the same thing at all, but I had glued them together anyway. My physical therapist, who I saw for six weeks in the spring of 2025 and who is a saint with a clipboard, finally said it plainly: a cane is not a walker. It is a tool you take out when the ground is bad. That sentence is the only reason I own one.

I ordered it in September 2025, after a flare-up made my one-mile loop with Ruth feel like a hike. I bought it myself, on Amazon, with my own money, the same as everything else I write about. I had put it off for the better part of a year.

I was not being brave by refusing a cane. I was being stubborn, and stubborn sends its bill to the stairs.

I do not use it every day. That surprised me. On a good week the HurryCane stays folded in my tote bag in the car, and I walk my loop with Ruth with nothing but my own two feet. On a bad knee week it comes out. Uneven ground, the church steps on Sunday, the market when the pavement has been heaved up by tree roots, the airport in July when I am carrying a bag and cannot afford a wobble.

Two things about it turned out to matter more than I expected. The first is that it stands up on its own. When you let go of it, it does not clatter to the floor. That sounds like a small thing until you are at the market and you need both hands to pick up a tomato, or you are at church and you want to hold the hymnal. The second is the fold. Folded it is 13.7 inches, so it disappears into a bag instead of riding in the passenger seat like another passenger.

The height adjusts from 30.5 to 37.5 inches, and you set it once so it fits you rather than whoever assembled it. It weighs 16 ounces, about the same as a can of soup, which matters at the end of a long walk. Aluminum shaft, rubber handle, resin base. It does not feel like a medical device in the hand. Mine was set in the first week and I have not touched the adjustment since.

What it is not: a fix. My knee still has arthritis. The cane does not make cartilage grow back and it does not make the stairs disappear. It gives me a steadier walk and takes some of the load off that right side, and some days that is the whole difference between going and not going. On ice I still hold the rail. I asked my doctor about the proper height before I trusted it, and I would say the same to you, because a cane set wrong is worse than no cane.

One honest annoyance. Unfolding it takes a moment and both hands. If I am holding a cup of coffee and the doorbell rings, the cane is not coming out in a hurry. That is a small trade for something that lives in a tote bag, but it is still a trade.

What I'd Tell You If We Were Sitting at My Kitchen Table

If you were at my kitchen table with a sore knee and a stubborn streak, here is what I would say. Nobody is watching you as closely as you think. I was convinced the whole neighborhood would notice and start treating me like glass. What actually happened is that Ruth asked where I got it, and the woman behind the tomato table said her sister has one too.

I would say get the tool before the flare-up, not after. I waited until a Tuesday when the stairs were genuinely hard, and I paid for that waiting with about four months of not doing things. The cane was never the loss I was afraid of. The shrinking was the loss, and I did that part to myself.

And I would say have somebody check the fit. Talk to your doctor or your physical therapist about the right height and the right way to hold it, because there is a wrong way and it will leave your shoulder sore. That is the advice I got, and it is the advice I pass along.