Originally posted by lesmore49 I should of mentioned that I have a 'hockey knee' from playing 9 years as a defenceman. I've had an operation on my knee, but as a result....bicycle riding, sitting in seats (ie; driving) is not easy (pain) unless I can straighten my leg out partially or completely. Getting old
and hockey injuries limit me in certain areas.
I can relate, although not in the knees.
My feet are better now after multiple corrective surgeries, but still not as good as new.
It has been ten or eleven years since the left hip replacement, and it is certainly better than before. But I still get periodic pain in the femur, where the stem is inserted. I get extreme pain there periodically, such that it can drop me to my knees. The surgeon can't explain it, and only says I should have no pain there.
I can't even go bowling. The windup is impossible as when my weight comes down on the left leg, the pain is so brutal that I cannot support myself and fall.
I've lost count of all the times I have injured my spine, the first being in my teens, a lumbar injury that resulted in a couple ruptured discs. I re-injure that area now and again.
Mostly I think I just aggravate it. Like today, I worked on one of my tractors most of the day.
And my low back hurts some.
I also injured my cervical spine as a teen, in high school. The only part of phys ed classes I enjoyed was when we got to do things on the parallel bars, horse, springboard, and trampoline. And one day I was doing somersaults on the trampoline, and had been doing triples. As I attempted to execute another, I made it only two and a half times, landing on the back of my head, hyper extending my neck. I bounced off of the trampoline and onto the mat, out cold before I landed. I woke to the whole class standing around, looking down at me. The coach asked if I was OK, I muttered something and was asked to get up. After I got up the coach sent me to the school nurse. She called my mom, who picked me up and took me to the Navy hospital. They gave me Valium and sent me home.
These days when I rotate my head the cervical bones grind and rumble, and I hear it through the bones of my skull.
And it hurts now and then.
In the mid 1980's I was cutting firewood in local forest, some maple. Trying to save time I cut the logs into 8 foot lengths, and was flipping them into the back of my pickup. I got under the end of one, and pushed up from a squat, quite vigorously, and not only felt, but heard two thoracic vertebrae crush. I finished loading the tuck, loaded my saw and fuel, drove home, unloaded the truck, and was getting ready for work (I worked second shift then and always went wood cutting in the morning before work) when the pain got real bad, and I decided to stop at the doctor's office on the way to work.
They took some x-rays, and the doctor gave me two choices,
A back board and full body traction for 6 weeks, or go home and lie on a sheet of plywood for six weeks.
I chose the latter.
Of course at the time I didn't own a television. So on the way home I stopped at Sears and bought a TV, to be delivered, then stopped at Viacom, the local cable TV business at the time and ordered cable television.
Then I went to the pharmacy and picked up the pain pills the doctor prescribed, and went home to get the plywood bed ready.
The next day the TV arrived, and the cable guy showed up and I was set.
So my mid back bothers me sometimes too.
But not today.
Just that low back soreness I mentioned.
I decided a few years ago that I was no longer going to let the pain of a lifetime of playing and working hard interfere with life.
So I don't .
Mostly I ignore it.