Isn’t it funny how you just take things for granted… like being able to walk properly?
Because, for the last couple of weeks, my landscape has been trying to get over a knackered knee and the attendant pain that arrives with it.
Right now, I have a left knee joint that snaps, crackles and pops. Fine for a breakfast cereal, no use for trying to live your life.
You can tell when it cracks, clicks or creaks, because not only is it audible within a radius of 10 feet, it also comes with a yelp, an “oocha”, or a sharp intake of breath from yours truly.
And, to add insult to injury, the rest of my leg from the knee up has come out in painful protest, along with my left hip and my lower back. From sharp and searing to dull and aching, I’ve got the full smorgasbord.
All of this means I am hirpling around, making appalling noises while bemoaning how one simple, stupid trip while running could result in such long-term nuisance and pain.
The slippery slope of your 60s
The gutting aspect was that it happened while I was training for the London Marathon. After the initial injury, with some rest and physio, I got the green light to run again and thought I was back in the game.
That was until I pulled up short on a six-mile run with a sickening crunch in my joint – and the sickening realisation that there was now no way I would be part of the Geriatric Running Club team for the scamper in the Big Smoke next month.
Not only were my marathon hopes dashed, but it also ushered in what has now been more than three weeks of aches and frustration. All of a sudden, things that you wouldn’t give a second thought become daunting.
A recent walk to the train station was an ordeal that saw me stopping every few yards until the sharp stabbing sensations stopped – so much so that I nearly turned round and went home.
The most irritating thing, though, is the way this injury is toying with me
I refused to do that on the grounds that it would be a slippery slope to not doing things. That’s not a door I’m prepared to push open as I saunter through my 60s.
But even getting off the sofa now more often than not comes with the feeling something has snapped in my leg. And let’s not even talk about stairs – an issue when you live on the top floor of an old, Victorian building.
Don’t take your body for granted
Sure, I’m still following my physio regime (I can now stand stock-still on one leg on a wobble board like a zen stork) and pain relief options are available, but this injury is taking its sweet time to sort itself out.
The most irritating thing, though, is the way it is toying with me. Sometimes, I find myself pain-free, walking normally and thinking: “Oh, good, on the road to recovery” – only for something to go twang again, and the hobbling returns, ad nauseam, ad infinitum.
I know my knee will eventually sort itself. It had better, as I’m taking up my deferred ballot place for the London Marathon in April, and need to restart training at the start of January.
But, until it does, I’m really not enjoying this foreshadowing of what happens when your body stops doing what you always took for granted that it could and should.
Scott Begbie is entertainment editor for The Press & Journal and Evening Express
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