I'm experiencing increased injury potential as I get older

in #age4 days ago

The funny thing is that these injuries are not coming from intentional physical activity like you might expect and since I have not pursued any sort of medical intervention because I am American and our health care system is fucked, I have my own method of dealing with it: I walk it off, be a man, suck it up, etc.


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I get a lot of rogue "injuries" from silly things like sleeping in a bad position or having my legs propped up on an ottoman for too long but these are easily solved with some morning stretched over a couple of days. There are other injuries, one that is nagging me still a few days later, that is the result of a pretty stupid situation.

I live on the 3rd floor of a 10 story building and in my bedroom we have these wonderful windows that offer fantastic views of the city I live in. There is just one problem though in that these windows are never cleaned by the people that own the building. While the air quality in my city is pretty good considering the amount of industry that is here and how many people live here, eventually the goop gets caked up on the outside. This makes my relatively expensive apartment looks cheap and run down. So one day, I decided to climb out there and sort the situation out myself. Oh by the way the windows, which are double-paned and quite high quality, do not open at all. So simply opening them and cleaning them on the other side while open is not an option.

Now this is a potentially dangerous situation because there is no balcony out there. There is a wall that is about waist height and this is probably for insurance reasons or something. I suppose I am glad it is there even though it blocks 1/3 of my view because otherwise getting out there to clean said windows wouldn't be possible at all.

So crawling out one of the corner windows that actually does open was pretty tough because the landing on the other side is not very big.


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The area from the window to the ground is slightly above crotch level and this was uncomfortable but very do-able. I kept all my gear inside and reached through after crawling out there. I did the dirty and did a pretty good job on the windows if I do say so myself, but I think I ruined two towels and used a quart of windex in the process. Job done right? Well, not really.

As it turns out, due to the very limited space on this little landing there, getting my leg back through the window wasn't possible. So I had a couple of choices at this point: Live outside until I froze to death, or figure out a way to crawl back in.

I went for "butt on the landing" lift myself over with my tremendous upper-body strength and hope the frame of the window can support 200 lbs."

This went well until it came time to pull my legs over. I got one but when I was pulling the other one over I was in such an unnatural position that I tweaked my calf quite badly. I don't really know how but since I was straining all over trying to not fall and completely bust my ass my calf seized up into a massive cramp. Here I am two days later and the remnants of that cramp are still evident. I have to walk like I have an injury and in a way I suppose I do. I do stretches in the morning and they are quite painful but we get through them. I also go and "walk it off" for about 4km a day and don't really care if people see me walking like a zombie.

I know my own body and know this is nothing serious but one thing that makes me a little bit sad is that even though I take pretty good care of myself as far as health is concerned, things like this just happen to older folks and there is not a great deal that can be done to change this. If I actually did go and see a doctor about this I am sure they would just run some $500 scans and then tell me what I already know: "your leg is sore."

So for the time being I am just trying to do other exercises, mainly weights and what not, while focusing more on doing stretches on my lower body. I think that is something that people, especially people that primarily weight-train don't focus on as much as they should.

I don't think there is anything I could have done to prevent this. It was kind of courageous of me to go out there and clean the windows but the good news is that if I am on my bed relaxing midday because my leg hurts, I now have a much cleaner view of the outside world.