alpinisto's blog

Three months had passed since the surgery, where my well used right knee had been exchanged with a prosthesis after nine marathon races, 40 years of climbing mountains all over the world and a load of long-distance hikes, which had taken its toll on both my knees. The right knee was the most worn, so it went under surgery last October, and then the left knee was supposed to get under the knife this January. Yesterday I was back in the hospital for the last check-up after the surgery of my right knee, so I had a feeling that this meeting would be very important and a guideline for my wrestling future.

The result of this last check-up can be cut down to one good news and one bad news. The bad news was that the surgeon was of the opinion that I should expect to put my wrestling on the shelf, as a contact sport like wrestling would not be good for the more brittle prosthesis I now had. I had had the impression that a knee not really was an hinge, but only worked as one. I supposed that there was nothing which physically connected these three bones, as it only was my leg muscles and tendons keeping the leg connected and functional, and such muscles can be trained.

The good news was that my surgeon had shelved his previous plan that I also needed to have a prosthesis for my left knee this winter, and this told me that I wouldn't need to rush my wrestling this year, as this no longer needed to be done before June, when I had expected to have my second surgery.

I had the previous month done some beforehand planning of who, when and where I wanted to wrestle before I would be in for the next surgery. I actually had been considering meeting other wrestlers in Berlin, Bremen, London, Brussels and Florida plus an extra travel to a non-wrestler in Dresden. All places to travel to before or not later than June. Surely I would love to do them all, but I was happy that I no longer needed to have the big rush to do them all before June. So I an now thinking of returning to my old wrestling plan of doing a wrestle every month, which should give me good enough time to recover after the matches.

Two of these plans I have put on high priority, and these are my travels to Berlin and London. Berlin I am sure will come first, because some of my friends there, the guys I have wrestled the most often, will surely accept a slow recovery match for me so I this way will be able to find out whether I will be ready to wrestle now or I will have to wait longer. And the other plan is London, because I have a long-time invitation to go there, which had not been possible because of the Brexit troubles.

The London trip will probably be a longer travel, because it is now four years ago since I last time visited London and there are so many guys I'd love to wrestle there, so I probably also will need some extra days between the matches while I am there. And at least one of them is a heavyweight guy I had had the wish of wrestling for many years, so I better have to prepare my body and muscles for that match.

But for the time being I am expecting that my next wrestling match, and my first after the surgery, will take place in Berlin, hopefully in the beginning of March.