I’m not complaining, I’m just saying. It’s has been hurting for a long time. Maybe a year. I don’t know why.

Sometimes I can hardly feel it, other times I’m in such pain I hobble around like a man of 70.  Oh!  Wait a minute.  I am a man of 70.  Surly not. How did that happen?  I was only 35 a year or two ago.  Hmmm.

I’m not complaining.  I know that I have been very lucky with my health.  Throughout my life I have been blessed.  Which is, perhaps, surprising as I have given my body just about as much physical and emotional punishment as I am sure it was designed to take.  A constant succession of ball sports, sailing, long distance walking, running, cycling, swimming and a dogged determination to do virtually everything around the home myself, no matter how daft or dangerous, has made sure that whoever receives my left-over bits, as detailed on my donor card, will get a rough deal.  Despite it all, I have suffered almost nothing except the occasional blister and a few scars, lumps and bumps that bear testimony to a life well lived.  I did have a heart attack once, but we’ll gloss over that as a triviality.  Meanwhile, my knee still hurts.

Then again, the heart attack thing is perhaps relevant. You see, despite what so many say about our ‘broken’ National Health Service (whoever said that (Mr Streeting) needs a smack around the head in my opinion), when my moment of dire need came, the blue lights came to my rescue.  Within a few days I was returned to the bosom of my family, fully repaired and raring to take on the next high peak.  It was a remarkable thing, with the combined skill of brilliant people, and many millions of pounds worth of extraordinary equipment, all coming together to save the life of this one, probably undeserving, mortal.  Thank you.  I am eternally grateful.  But my knee hurts.

Every day, I hear tales of medical genius.  An old school friend of mine, for example, suffered from bowel cancer.  I saw him in hospital.  A once strong, hearty, active man reduced to a bag of bones in white linen.  I was sure we had lost him.  But no.  Somehow these incredible people got him through it.  We had lunch the other day.  He was eating like a navvy. Even closer to home, my own daughter, 20+ years ago was dying of cancer.  The medics said she wouldn’t survive.  But she hadn’t had the memo.  When we left hospital, some months later, they said she would never have children and, I think, expected her to be back with them in short order.  But no. Today she has three strapping teenagers, is a British champion powerlifter, and captains the local women’s rugby team. What she, and the NHS achieved, is nothing short of miraculous.   

Then there are the new techniques we hear about every day for treating Alzheimer’s, stroke victims, those injured in accidents or attacks and all the unbelievably clever stuff involving gene therapy, AI, plastic surgery and lots more that I don’t know about.  It’s all very clever indeed.

But my knee still hurts, despite a year of medical intervention.  Weird isn’t it.

I am not complaining.  I’m really not.  I just don’t understand why, something as simple as a stiff knee can defy medical science when so much else, that seems far more difficult, has become commonplace.  I even heard, the other day, how some very clever people in Cambridge (I think) are growing new organs for people in laboratories and transplanting them without fear of rejection, because they are formed of their own tissue.  Now that can’t be easy.

There are a lot of seemingly simple things that prove impossible. Ask a baby not to cry; convince your dog not to swipe the ham from the kitchen counter; stop young men from fighting; convince people that taking drugs is bad for them; make our leaders understand that the power of love is stronger than the love of power.  If we can do all these clever things, why do the seemingly simple things allude us?

And why does my knee still hurt?

Photo: Steve Jordan.

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