Feels like arthritis to me

A couple of years before baseball player JT Snow retired, he explained how, when he was young, could field ground balls easily, but now that he was getting older, fielding ground balls was tough on his back.  JT Snow happens to be my favorite baseball player of all time - a story I will post tonight in my blog, http://authorstevefujita.blogspot.com/ 

I'm a couple of years older than Snow, and when I was in my mid/late thirties, when Snow made that statement - though I don't play professional sports - I remembered back joking with one of the supervisors at work stating that when you pass 35 years old - sometimes you just wake up with the back hurting.

How does it realte to my spinal cord injury.  When I woke up from my coma, I couldn't make a fist.  Part of the reason was because my fingers were swollen like crazy. I don't know what the other reason was, but the effect was that my joints hurt. And once I was able to make a fist, it hurt to make one.  Until October, it hurt each time I made a fist.  Around October, the pain started to subside, and it only hurt in the morning, and now, it doesn't hurt when I make a fist.

My knees hurt now, kind of the way my knuckles did last Fall.  Six months ago, when I first started walking outdoors for longer than a block, my quad muscles and knees would ache after taking a couple of steps.  This went on for months.  Over the last three weeks or so, the pain has been gradually reducing to the knees and not as intense.

What does the pain feel like? Kind of what I expect arthritis to feel like - the joints hurt whenever I bend them - and the muscles are stiff.  And I can't move my legs very fast - I walk like a stereotypical elderly person with a cane. 

I thnk the key is to move around a lot, and loosen the muscles and joints.  I take at least one daily walk during the weekdays, and 1  - 2 walks on the weekends.  I think stretching out these muscles has helped me improve tremendously.  And how do the knee joints feel now - it feels like my knuckles in October.  I believe in a couple of months, the knees will be as flexible and pain free as my hands.