I was walking toward a restaurant for a dinner with old friends a year or so ago, when one of them approaching called out, “Whoa! How did you hurt your leg?”
That honestly was the first time I became conscious that I often walk with a pronounced limp. My left knee has not been my friend for more than a decade, and for several years I guess I have been in denial. Most of the time I don’t notice the pain, but apparently my gait does.
I’ve never been interested in a knee replacement, and the one time I started to consider the possibility, there was an outbreak of obituaries of people who “died from complications of knee surgery.”
The topic is on my agenda for my annual checkup, though, a few weeks from now. I hope to make a little progress on the weight-loss front before then, too. I have long thought that part of the problem is the extra strain I have placed on this 6-foot-1 skeleton that went the first 44 years supporting less than 200 pounds, and I’d love to see how improved my health would be if I got back down to that mark. The problem there is, I haven’t weighed less than 200 pounds for about 30 years.
That doesn’t mean my suspicions aren’t correct. Let’s see if I can muster the discipline to get there.
