Too much to ask for

Sometimes I miss being 25.

I miss being able to spend the night sleeping on the cold damp ground and being able to get up and actually be able to function the next day. I miss not dozing off 20 minutes into watching a movie with my family or not thinking that 9 p.m. is way too late to start any activity that doesn’t directly involve sleeping.

As summer turned into fall this year, my hope was to ride out the remaining few weeks of my 40s without major incident. I went out of my way to avoid tempting fate. I steered clear of climbing tall ladders or attempting to cross streams on slippery boulders. I even made sure to drink a lot of water and go to bed at a reasonable time when I met up with friends for our annual “camping” trip — it is a stretch to call any outing where we had a ceiling fan and actual real beds camping.

Fate, it seems was conspiring against me and decided that I shouldn’t escape being 49 unscathed.

Somewhere along the line, I crossed the threshold of being able to sustain a joint injury while asleep.

All of us past a certain age are well aware what challenges the overnight hours bring. There is the ever-present risk of feeling like you have broken off your pinky toe when you stub it while walking to the bathroom in the middle of the night. There is the stiff neck you get and subsequent three weeks of going to the chiropractor because your pillow shifted half an inch to the left.

All of these challenges I have faced and, for the most part, have overcome.

About a week and a half ago, I noticed my left knee was a little stiff and tender when I got out of bed. I didn’t think much of it, figuring it was just the cold, dampness creeping in. I briefly considered turning up the heat, but quickly came to my senses.

I went through that day noticing the twinge in my knee was not going away. Regardless, I was busy and had things to do and couldn’t be bothered with a bit of pain. The knee could just wait in line.

My knee, it seems has other plans. Instead of diminishing into the background cacophony of aches and pains that are with me as I travel through my day, my knee decided to become the penultimate diva drama queen of joints and inflict a piercing, stabbing pain when I take a step or turn it ever so slightly to the left or right.

For the record, yes, I would like some cheese to go with my whine — a nice smoked gouda or muenster would be great, I am not too picky, but draw the line at that casu martzu stuff.

I am sure that spending several hours working with a group of high school students to string Christmas lights as part of a Medford homecoming community service project didn’t help my knee, nor did a full weekend of activities. A smart person, one who had actually absorbed the lessons of nearly 30 years of articles about how to respond to pain, would not have decided the best course was to muscle through and try to ignore it. It was when I noticed that my left knee was about twice the size of my right one, that I needed a change in my strategy.

Judging by the symptoms and location of the pain, I appear to have strained one of the tendons leading from my kneecap to my lower leg. I suppose I could make an appointment to have it checked out, but since the remedy is to rest, ice, keep it wrapped and wait for it to heal, I figure I can do that on my own and save myself an insurance copay. For now, my plan is to limp around for a while until everyone I know finds it unbearable to be around me, or maybe until my family’s insurance deductible is met.

I’ll keep you updated on how that plan is working for me.

I will have to say this whole getting older stuff is for the birds.

Brian Wilson is News Editor at The Star News.