Another Success Story to Celebrate!

I love success stories. They lift the spirits of people struggling to stick to what can be a years-long process to rehabilitate their bad knees.

I was pleasantly surprised last month to learn that TriAgain, an Australian triathlete who was one of the first people to post comments on this blog, has announced that he has completely healed.

"I'm declaring my knees 100% fixed now," he wrote in a comment. And how long did it take?

Only ... eight years and six months! How's that for dedication to a cause? It makes my own experience seem like a walk in the park.

Congratulations to TriAgain! There's more on his story here; I wrote about his battle back in September 2015. And his latest comments are here.

One thing I have come to realize is that we all don't heal in quite the same way, or hold quite the same beliefs. For instance, I'm quite skeptical of the value of stretching. Meanwhile, there are some who have healed from knee pain who swear stretching really helped.

But I think we agree on the important stuff. To me that's:

That bad, cranky knees can get better. If you choose to give up on your knees, that's your choice, but it's not as if they must inevitably stay the same or get worse.

That the road to recovery is often not easy, and there aren't any gimmicks or magic pills. I suspect that a number of people bought my book looking for some "secret" on page 159 or some such. I truly learned a lot from having knee pain and healing, but there's no magic juice or exercise that does the trick for all.

That healing requires a certain fortitude, optimism (but very much grounded in the possible), tenacity, determination, and stubbornness not to give up the fight, even when you seem to be losing (and there will be plenty of those times).

That, in a world where facts sometimes don't seem to matter, facts and science really do matter if you are serious about healing, because a knee pain sufferer is running an experiment of sorts, trying to unlock the combination that leads to steady, slow improvement (per Scott Dye).   

That patience is a key virtue, because it can take months (or even eight years) to get better.