Hiking Poles to the Rescue

 Hiking Poles to the Rescue Again

I learned my lesson the hard way.

After years of day hiking, I graduated to backpacking, and then at age 34, got my family into backpacking. Heavy loads, especially going downhill, puts a lot of stress on knee cartilage. My son, the physical therapist, explains that this is called eccentric loading which is very stressful on the knee joint. That's the opposite of loading the knee joint when going uphill. Around age 55, I started experiencing increasing jolts of pain in my left knee, particularly going downhill. This led to three arthroscopies over a few years to remove torn cartilage. I had started using a single hiking pole to help with the heavy loads but too late to stop the irreversible damage in my knee. Eventually, there was no cartilage remaining, down to bone on bone. This led to my left knee joint replacement. Sometime in all this, I graduated to two hiking poles. Not only did they help reduce my discomfort going up and down hills, but I also used them for propulsion, like ski touring, at the end of the day when the legs were tired and felt like they were close to giving out.

After my last surgery, I was forced to use a walker to assist me getting out of bed, to the john, the shower, and around the house. The walker also provided a sense of security. Even with a heavy duty back brace, I felt unsteady and lacking confidence, deathly afraid of falling and hurting myself and undoing the slow healing and fusion process ongoing in my back.

Mobility with a walker is a challenge. My son installed yellow tennis balls on the back legs of the walker (wheels on the front) that allowed the walker to slide on floors and rugs, eliminating the need to lift the walker at every transition from floor to rug. Just lifting the walker was causing shooting pains in my back. But the walker is slow and cumbersome. And it ruins my image as the confident macho hiker. What self-respecting hiker would get caught dead using a walker? Alas! I have lost all my self-respect. What should I do?

Hiking poles to the rescue! The problem is you can't use hiking poles with carbide tips (good outdoors, especially on ice and rocks) in the house. Goodbye hardwood floors and rugs. But I do have poles with rubber tips installed over the carbide tips. Now, making the transition from walker to poles is not that easy. The walker is stable. I can support half my weight when the back is yelling at me. The poles are not stable. You can't balance your weight over a single point and expect not to tumble.

Now, I'm thinking. What did the poles do for me as a hiker? With the poles in my hands, I had become a four-legged hiker? This hiker was walking on all fours, like an animal. It gave me incredible purchase and added force going up and breaking going down hills. Even better, it also gave me the increase balance that cannot be achieved with only two legs. I had become so adept at locomotion with hiking poles, they had become a natural extension of my body. Slowly, with some trepidation, I made the transition from walker to poles. After a few days, I have my confidence back. My posture has improved as I concentrate on standing straighter and not leaning on the walker. The surgery has temporarily left me all hunched over. Now, I'm a four-legged walker, next a four-legged hiker. Compared to the walker, I've gained mobility. I can go outside. I "hiked" all the way to the back yard last week. We went (my wife is still doing all the driving, I haven't in two months) to CVS for our second booster shots yesterday. With our increased immunity in a couple weeks, we may even go out to a restaurant, if my wife thinks I am standing up straight enough.