Kneely there...

So, i'm going snowboarding on friday! Awesome! Problem is my knee has recently messed up a bit. I can still walk/run/jump/skip (which i really like doing btw) and generally be active. It's when i keep it bent for a while and straighten it that causes a problem and indeed, severe pain. I was a bit worried about the prospect of not being able to hit the slopes, as you'd imagine, but am gonna go for it.
Now, i don't have a grand delusion that any of you out there would find my health remotely interesting, but i wanted to write about this as today i had a bit of a realisation, or perhaps more accurately, an awakened appreciation of something which i guess i never really think about - our (uk) health system. I have a knee complaint. I can still do stuff as mentioned and my main concern is that i might not be able to go snowboarding. The timeline of my nhs dealing goes like this:
I first went to my GP on 27th Jan. He referred me and i got an appointment with a consultant today - 2 weeks later. I was xrayed and assessed and have been booked in for an mri scan on thursday... Pretty damn quick and thorough i thought and I couldn't help feeling not only grateful, but overwhelmingly privilaged that i live in a country where this can happen. Now i don't want to make sweeping statements about anything and open myself up to people explaining where they've been let down etc, but this is my experience and i feel very lucky to have it.
Having been to third world countries i am always very aware and consider the things that i have that others don't, from my lovely new macbook pro i use to make music, down to having food on my plate. These two are so far apart - my macbook, though it is for work, is a luxury. Food on my plate, i take for granted, in fact it is inconceivable that i would ever go hungry. Likewise i expect there to be a system in place if i hurt my knee, let alone have a life threatening illness/injury. It's just crazy to think of the amount of people in this same world that don't.

Now i don't want to go into how i think the world should change, but i think it's really important to take the time to consider how lucky some of us are to have systems in place to support us when we need help compared to other people. I certainly do.
x