The Milquetoast Job - A Tale of Two Legs

I love the story of Job because its a story that continues to play out day after day, year after year for all eternity. But I was really thinking about how much my life resembles this story of a guy who had it all but then had tragedy strike him and all the time that he is suffering, his friends continue to offer him advice. Only my version is decidedly less than earth shaking in its impact.

When I returned from Kenya, full of vim and vigor, I was ready to go out and conquer the world. This time I was really going to make a difference - hike, walk, whatever it took to lose weight. I even made plans to run the Bay to Breakers. I had a plan. I started to walk. I was ready to shed those pounds.

Three weeks later, my knee hurting a little from all the walking I'd been doing, I started on a particularly long and hard hike, figuring that I would "walk off" that nagging pain and feel better after the fact. I did walk off the pain, only to have it return as a crippling pain later in the hike. By the time I got home that night, I was in real pain and could barely walk.

Two days later, I went to the Emergency Room because I was in severe agony. No amount of icing or ibuprofen was helping. The Emergency Room doctor jabbed my knee with a needle to lessen the swelling (it didn't, but that's neither here nor there) and then took me aside. "You know," he said cooly, "You really ought to lose some weight. That's why you're having knee problems." Sitting on my ash heap at the time, I calmly explained that I'd just finished hiking eight miles on a bum knee to try doing exactly that. "I'm just saying," the doctor added.

Eventually, I got my knee swelling down though I continued to hobble. All the time I was metaphorically kicking myself for damaging my knee. As soon as I felt myself return to 98% of recovered, I hobbled out and started walking again. Bang! Out went the other knee.

As I now hobbled on the other knee, friends and family members continued to offer constructive advice, "You should take it easy. You keep damaging yourself. Let your legs heal, first." So I did. I let my legs heal. Long after they were healed, I had a relapse - and I hadn't been exercising at all. Then I healed my relapse, let my long period of sitting go on even longer, then started walking again - slowly. Hobbling. Eventually, after several weeks, I was actually able to hobble about a mile.

I drove to Vegas. No problems. I wandered up and down the Vegas Strip. No problems. I drove back home. No problems. YET, I still did not consider myself healed.

Finally, after a couple more weeks of walking normally, including one week where I walked more than I had since returning from Kenya, I finally made plans to go for another hike.

Then I twisted my ankle. Everyone saw me hobbling again and assumed it my knee - assumed that I had reinjured it. I explained that it was my ankle - a temporary setback. I hobbled for most of the last two weeks - taking it easy.

Yesterday, I threw caution to the wind for a good cause. I walked a little over five miles in a rain storm to raise money for Crop Walk. My legs, though stiff, did not fail. My ankle felt fine. I did develop a shin splint, but those go away relatively quickly (in fact, I can't even feel it now). I walked further than I'd walked since that day I blew out of my knee.

And when I reported the news to my Dad, he said, "See... all you needed was a little exercise."

I love the absurdity of this whole situation and try not to assign any cosmic significance to it other than the things that I thought before I started the whole process - I'm getting older and I need to lose some weight. The commentary has been, without a doubt, the most enjoyable part of it - like a Greek Chorus that is lagging behind the narrative by about three acts. I think when it comes to our health, human beings are at our most hypocritical. We ignore our own aches and pains while at the same time diagnosing dire ailments for anyone who dares to mention, or who is unable to hide, their own infirmities. I'm frankly surprised we don't have more hypochondriacs out there. It is, of course, the physical manifestation of the parable of the man trying to remove the splinter in his friend's eye while he has a log in his own eye. It is rather remarkable how the more the world changes, the more human beings remain the same.

As a final addendum to this lengthy discourse, I'm planning to hike again this Saturday - assuming I can make it through the week without something else falling off. My goal of losing weight, though many times thwarted, has never changed.