Early this year I discovered that I could not bend my right knee behind me nearly as much a I could the left one. There was a time when my both my legs folded nicely beneath me.
But alas, it’s seems that ability is behind me now. Mind you, I haven’t given up hope and I still try stretching as well as I can but so far I’ve been stymied. I set up an appointment with an orthopedic doctor who, after X-rays and and MRI pronounced that I had a minor tear in my meniscus and that my knee was mostly suffering from age related arthritis. No surgery was recommended for the time being. Pain relief procedures were offered and declined by me. I can deal with pain but I don’t like doing it blindly. I like to know what’s going on in order to lessen any possible damage whenever possible. Over the past year I’ve been feeling arthritis in my hands which serves to take some of the pleasure of working with them. I’ve always loved working with my hands and this has caused me to modify my approach and thinking about use my hands. I’ve found that wrapping aggravated finger joints helps greatly. I also don’t tend to use as much force now as I use to when doing things like hammering. I also will now chose a larger tool in order to lessen the presser on my hands when wrenching. I wonder if I’ll ever come to a place where I can’t do any meaningful work with my hands what what that might be like. In the mean time I’m being a bit more choosy about what I work on and much more appreciative of the work that I can still do. Gratitude, it's one of the great balms and rewards of a long life.
Back to my knees. They most recently and surprisingly showed up as an issue when I tried to climb our mast to replace our steaming & foredeck lights and inspect out mast head, jib sheave in order to determine the cause of excessive fraying of our jig halyard. Back in the day, climbing used to feel effortless and fun to me.
No so any more. Last year, when we were prepping Malo for her trip to Oregon, I went up the mast a total of 8 times spending a combined 8 hours up there, first inspecting, then removing the old radome, installing a new bracket and then a new dome, fixing the mast head light and installing new wind instruments. It was hard, significantly harder then the last item I had gone up a mast 8 years earlier which was not so unexpected given the amount of time that had passed. The shocker came last week when I attempted to go up the mast again. It was a lot harder that last just year. I couldn’t use my etriers (webbing steps) hooked to my climbing ascenders because of the pain in my knees. I had been using the etriers in conjunction with Bev hoisting me via a genoa winch but I couldn’t do my half. I couldn't drive upwards with my feet, my knees wouldn’t let me. It was a disheartening moment but we huddled together and decided to give it another try with me discarding the etriers all together, Bev pulling header on the winch and me using my arms with the ascenders and both of us taking our time, with some rest breaks thrown in for good measure. By and by we managed to get me half way up the mast. I was able to remove the old light but broke off a bolt in the process and I couldn’t pull enough wire out of the mast in order to splice in the new fixture. Also buy that point my hips were killing me from the compression caused from the climbing harness. So down I came with the job unfinished.
We’re not giving up though. We went to the base of the mast in the cabin and discovered the cause of the overly taught wiring and how to free up enough for me to make an effective splice. We also ordered a bosun's chair that I’ll use in place of the climbing harness in order to avoid the painful hip compression. So Nietzsche’s old chestnut about “That which does not kill us, makes us stronger” may still apply at least in spirit if not in body.
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