Put Me Out To Pasture

Getting old sucks. It sort of creeps up on you when you’re not really looking.

I’ve been fairly lucky in that I don’t really have many grey hairs yet. Many of my friends starting getting their first grey hairs in university. While I have a few now, they’ve only recently emerged. Grey hairs don’t really bother me, but joint pain and random aches do.

The first real joint pain I ever had was due to an injury I had after doing the West Coast Trail years ago. I hurt my knee pretty badly on day three (I suspect I tore my ACL, but never had it looked at), and was forced to chew tylenol 3’s for the rest of the journey just to make it out. My friends split up my pack so that I could go on essentially packless, but even still, every step was painful. I’m glad I made it out on my own and didn’t need to get airlifted out, but to this day I still have pain in my knee from time to time, and doubt I’ll ever be able to hike again at the same level I did years ago.

Of course, I had that hospital-acquired super bug a few years ago, which knocked me on my ass for a few years there. The latest ailment I have has to do with sore feet, something that’s only started to show up recently. I’m not really sure why they are sore, but some days I wake up and they hurt enough such that walking is difficult. It could be that most of my shoes are old and worn out, or possibly that I no longer spend an hour of my day walking (I used to walk to and from work in Vancouver). Maybe it’s the fact that I spend most of my days at home walking on hardwood floors in bare feet. I’m not really sure, but it’s starting to piss me off. I recently bought a new pair of shoes, along with some expensive in-soles, so hopefully that helps. Either way, I’m starting to hear that ever present sound of gears grinding as I walk around daily.

Clearly, I’m no spring chicken anymore, but I’m not exactly over the hill either. I’m hoping I can get all these stupid ailments under control so that I can start hiking a bit more and doing a few more outdoor activities.

2013 Update

The foot pain was actually from a condition called Plantar Fasciitis, which is caused in some cases by being a bit overweight. Losing weight definitely helped me, as did the insoles I purchased.