The other day I did what I haven’t been able to do for a decade: I took a walk off the road. I walked about two kilometres on my crutches, along a forest path in Frederikshåb. I breathed in the fresh air of the conifers. Then I paused to watch bugs crawl on the ground and humble brown butterflies flit past on the breeze. I watched the heather, green and not yet in bloom, sprawling up the sand dunes of the heathland. Life doesn’t get better than this.
For years, I’ve only been able to limp about ten paces behind a rollator before needing a sit down. To catch my breath, sure, and to stop the pain. Every step a knife to the lower back. And now? Now I only worry about fatigue.
The weight loss helped me get here. 35 kilos is a lot of dead weight to lug around. But the real miracle has been getting my hip muscles to relax. My manual therapist (that’s what he calls himself, and he gets mad if I suggest he might be doing some kind of physiotherapy) has worked a miracle, pure and simple. The hip pain is just not there, at least not until I get tired.
I don’t walk well. I don’t walk far. I certainly don’t walk fast. But I walk. And that, my friends, is life quality so pure that I’m thinking about bottling it up and selling it on the dark web.