The graph of the usefulness of my knees would look like the inside of a shark’s mouth as the pointed tips of relative pain-free mobility are swamped by the depths of gum deep shitiness. A rather laboured simile to emphasise that the utility of my knees as working points of articulation in the furtherance of locomotion, is basically low. I find that I am limiting the length of my walking more and more, and the little that I do is with the aid of a stick.
Which leads to the question of what I am going to have to do about it. The obvious solution is to get new kneecaps but, with the backlog of clinical cases given the underfunding of the health service and the horrific demands of Covid something being done in the immediate future seems remote.
When I finally went to the doctor after the periods of lockdown that we suffered, I was greeted by his saying that the x-rays that he had looked at giving a graphic picture of the state of my knees were among the worst that he had seen. Nice to see you again too!
Various (legal!) subterfuges were used to get me on to some sort of list to be seen and I was eventually told that my first visit to a traumatologist would be almost a year in the future!
To cut a long story short, that “year” is now almost up, and in October I will have my first face-to-face meeting with someone who has the power to do something radical to reduce the pain and to make me fully (?) mobile again.
Because the state of my knees is so variable, I have, over the last number of months resorted to crutches, sticks, pain killers and highly expensive off-the-shelf powders to bring some sort of relief. In so far as I am no longer using crutches to move about, I would have to admit that I have made progress. In so far as I am still in pain and can walk only limited distances, there is much further to go. So to speak!
Things were brought to some sort of head when we accompanied my cousin and friend to Sitges for a meal in a restaurant that is situated over the shallows of the sea. And you can see real fish!
Our usual parking place in Sitges is far too far for me to walk to get to the sea and so we decided to use the car park under an hotel on the sea front, thereby giving me a fairly flat walk to the restaurant.
It took me the best part of a week to recover from the walking that I had to do – and the meal was ordinary, over-priced and badly served! Something had to be done.
The solution, of sorts involved buying something. As I am never averse to spending money, especially on gadgets, I was all-in for Toni’s suggestion that the answer may be the purchase of an electric scooter.
I am well aware that the average age of an electric scooter user is a mere 25% of mine – or less – but I am inured to expressions that look askance at me and what I am doing, so that the only question that arose in my mind was would I be able to balance on it. And more pressingly, would it fit in the back of the car, as I had absolutely no intention of making it my prime mode of urban transport.
A further energy depleting walk, and I was ready to buy.
Although I am given (wholeheartedly) to the concept of the ‘impulse buy’ which my support of various good (and not so good) purchases from sites like Kickstarter and Indiegogo can vividly demonstrate, I had to be somewhat circumspect about this purchase as it had to take account of my weight and height and also be something that was not dependent on being sent back to China in case something went wrong.
Eventually, after yet another bad experience of overestimating how far I could walk, I bought one and awaited its arrival.
It arrived (via Amazon) very quickly and it was waiting to be unboxed after I returned from my morning swim.
The amount of construction involved in its formulation was minimal – four screws to keep the handlebars on the stem – but, without Toni it would have been, for me, insurmountable. Three of the screws went in. Eventually. But one was stubborn and now matter how I (or indeed Toni) tried, it would not ‘go home’.
Far from being downcast (as I was) Toni was jubilant, as this particular problem gave him the opportunity to try out something that he had bought because, “It would come in useful” – a screw thread re-doer. The thread was re-done and it worked perfectly.
The machine was charged up and all it then needed was for me to use it.
At this point, I should point out that I did indeed own a mechanical scooter when I was a single digit child, but I had not tried one since that time. Over sixty (60) years previously!
It was therefore with some considerable trepidation that I ventured out onto the road and put foot to platen and pushed myself off.
While I would not describe myself as a confident, or indeed competent, rider of the scooter, I did not fall off and I managed to return to the house after a trip of a couple of kilometres, with machine and myself undamaged.
Result!
The next thing to do is to try and fit it into the boot of the car and then to actually use the thing for the purpose for which it was bought.
I am trepidatiously confident.
Future blog entries should show whether such hope was justified or not!
