Putting It In Perspective
 

I've been very busy complaining about my 6-week-old artificial knee: it keeps me from doing any of my favorite activities, it requires hours per day of ridiculous physical therapy exercises, it hurts like hell much of the time, et cetera et cetera yadda yadda yadda.

In this morning's New York Times I found an article about an ex-motorcyclist competing in a footrace on some familiar ground in southern Morocco which helped put my endless whinging into perspective. It's not as if I'm not entitled to complain a bit; it's more that on the continuum of complain-worthy things that happen in life, mine are not so bad, really.

I'm off to do my morning range-of-motion exercises. Here's the link:

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/...es-sables.html

well, the 3 plates and 21 screws in my right ankle, courtesy of an ass hat taxi driver in managua, pale by comparison.


my lifelong best friend is a below the knee amputee and he absolutely amazes me.


stick with the "stupid" therapy.

A friend of mine had a knee replaced three years ago after a car accident. It took a painful while and, as you're experiencing, a lot of painful exercises but she's back to pretty much normal now. Stick with it - I don't know what you were like before but she had a number of years of very restricted mobility while the medics were waiting and watching to see if anything improved on its own and the replacement is (post recovery) so much better.

The Marathon des Sables lady has my admiration. I'm training for a 100k ultra (roughly stages 1-3 of the MdS) in mid July and it's pushing me to my limits. The thought of doing over twice the distance, in those conditions and with a prosthesis is inconceivable. Mind you she's 50lbs lighter and 20yrs younger and does, if you take the NYT report at face value, seem more driven than the majority of us, but even so ...

I have nothing but total respect for people with physical or mental disabilities who do not let it stop them doing what they want to do, I was particularly impressed by this chap who set out to be the first disabled person to row across the Atlantic and ended up breaking the able bodied record.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-devon-47443233