You might remember, I made a promise to myself at the weekend that I’d finally get around to making an appointment this week to see someone about my dodgy knee. After digging out my health insurance pamphlet to get the telephone number, I’d kind of imagined an unhurried consultation with a handsome looking bloke, with a smattering of very distinguished silver at his temple that I couldn’t help noticing as he spoke to me with a deep and reassuring – some might even say sexy – voice.
That’s what the picture on the pamphlet led me to believe was going to happen. He’d gently feel my leg whilst I admired his bedside manner, and if luck and a strong headwind was on my side I might even get to go back to get my leg felt again, on a regular basis.
So, we all know it was never going to work out like that, right?
Having made the call and limped through all the appropriate hoops I was offered a telephone consultation with a physiotherapist. They call it a triage service, and it’s designed to establish whether or not you need to actually see someone, or whether you’re just old and fat and need to shut up and get used to snarky joints.
I took the call in a little meeting room at work next to our communal office, and if anyone had walked past and glanced through the glass window whilst I was occupied on the phone, well let’s just say eyebrows would have been raised. During the course of the thirty minute consultation I bent, stretched, squatted and lunged my way though a hundred questions whilst Mystic Meg on the other end of the phone tried to make a diagnosis.
Which, it turned out, was that I’m old and fat, and better get used to the odd ache and pain because it’s not leaving any time soon.
On the one hand I’m relieved that there’s nothing actually wrong with my knee. On the other hand it’s devastating to know that this red-hot poker has taken up residence under my kneecap for no other reason than the years of body abuse I’ve inflicted upon it, driven by the broken relationship I have with food. It’s resulted in me having the joints of someone way older than my actual age, and it seems I should be thinking more along the lines of managing the discomfort than getting it fixed.
Shit. Well, there we are then.
She’s happy for me to keep walking, and the hurt machine is fine too. She didn’t even miss a beat when I told her about the mountains in Cuba, although she did say I might want to pack enough ibuprofen to knock out a hippo, which would no doubt come in handy. On a brighter note she reckons it might hurt less if I lost some weight. Oh yes, and avoid running…that was a blow, obviously.
I didn’t bore her with the details, or tell her that I was already in the zone. But that’s at least something to hang my hat on. And it doesn’t hurt all the time, that’s the thing. It’s just when I’ve walked a fair distance and then I sit down, the first steps after getting up again are agony, like it all locks up or something.
Well, fine. If that’s the deck I’m playing with, I’ll just crack on. I never had much sympathy for folk with a self-induced hangover, and this is no different at the end of the day…I made my bed and all that.
C’est la vie 🙂
