So far (I think) it has not crept out at night to do mayhem on the innocent – but it’s sure looking impressive. I am now an amalgam of machine parts: you might like to tell anyone you know whose fingers are crippled with arthritis: there is a better way. Don’t wait too long. The more deformity has already occurred the harder it is to correct. However you can have new joints in your hands – probably not the tip ones which they would fuse if they were painful, but all the ones further away from your finger tips – and you will be up and using them (a little) after a week, and progressively more and more until you should be able to climb a rope with them once more after @ 6 months. It is also surprisingly cheap, and not specially painful. Like the microsurgery (neurosurgery – up and hiking same day, pain free!) I had (laminectomy) on my spine to correct similar arthritic problems, I (so far) wholeheartedly recommend this procedure. One of the knuckles had 0 degrees of movement a week ago; the other less than 20 degrees. I guess I have 60 degrees now one day out of a cast in both and improving on that every day. In six months time I will be (almost literally) a new man – back to my ideal weight and fitter than I have been my whole life – which has been a pretty fit one: I still have no trouble walking 20-30 km through the bush carrying a hiking pack day after day at 66; but I want to do more, and there is only this one life to do it in! Do remember that: don’t kick back and take it easy – as if waiting for your second innings. There will be no second innings. Make the most of this one. As I said the other day: ‘We can choose to do anything. The corollary: we can do anything we choose.’ http://www.theultralighthiker.com/free-willdeterminism/ Caption: Still a bit swollen and mercurochrome stained.
