What’s the cost of not playing full out and living your life completely?
I’m writing this on 10 March 2025 and two weeks before this date I had my left knee fully replaced by a titanium and polyethylene joint so that I can experience much more of my life with hopefully a lot less pain. The decision to have this life changing surgery didn’t happen without a lot of careful consideration and lots and lots of thinking. Twenty-eight years of thinking to be precise.
I remember sitting on the bed at the orthopaedic surgeon’s consulting rooms 28 years ago and hearing him say the words “You’re going to need a knee replacement within the next ten years but because of your age, you should try to delay it because these replacements only last for about 10 years.” Not an easy thing to hear as a 38-year-old who loved to exercise and who at that stage, had had a full and successful netball career.
My life as a netball player started at the young age of 9 years old. My older sister was 11 years older than me and at 20 years old, she was a brilliant netball player and I was in awe of her skills in the 1st team in goal defence position at our local netball club.
It was a difficult time at home. My father had passed away one month before my 9th birthday. My 49-year-old mother was both sad and mad at my taxi-driver father’s passing, leaving her with a young child to feed with only her boot factory wages as a machinist as income. She was also tired a lot of the time and I didn’t want to stay at home when I could be watching my sister and her friends leap and jump with what seemed like magical springs in their feet. So I nagged until my sister dragged me along to practice and one day when they needed someone to stand in because they were short of a player, I had no choice but to listen to my very physically persuasive sister, and so the obsession started.
Just a few short years later, I found myself playing a high level of netball and at 16 years old I made the junior Southern Transvaal Provincial side at school and began playing at a higher level at club level with some much older and more experienced players and I loved it. My sister was a taskmaster and there was no backing out if you had a sore knee or a sprained finger – you were told “Don’t be a baby and just get back on the field and play netball.”
I loved those days and achieved many awards as the most improved player, top player, and most outstanding player amongst others and went on to play in the Super Leagues at a young age and eventually finished my netball career playing indoor netball as a 45-year-old at Masters level.
I have no regrets but as with all things, there is a price to pay. I learnt about resilience, discipline and loyalty, and how to be a team player. I learnt to bite my tongue at unfair umpiring for fear of being sent off the field and to speak up when fair play went unrecognized to my coach without fear of recrimination.
I paid the price and received many accolades and awards and also paid the price with injuries at an early age including but not limited to broken fingers, damaged rotator cuffs, dislocated shoulders, sprained ankles, and most of all cartilage damage to my knees and mostly I just sucked it up and carried on. The earliest of these was to remove my broken cartilage at age 27. Again at age 38, I had to go for keyhole surgery to my knees and consequently had about 3 more of these over the years. These days it’s different and I’m glad because there’s no need to carry on regardless and teams are managed and trained with a different set of rules. We didn’t know better back then.
So with over 36 years as a competitive athlete, and the ensuing 21 years as a regular participant in walks, hikes, and various other sporting activities the damage continued with treatment being cortisone injections, physiotherapy, multiple massage therapies, anti-inflammatories, pain blockers and even a very painful platelet injection directly into the knee. Of course, you can only do so much until the body says enough!
So today am I sorry? No, I loved every moment and wouldn’t change anything. Today I find myself with a new bionic knee that I pray will keep me going for however long I get to explore this magnificent planet.
I have hikes to walk, beaches to stroll on, and roof-top tent ladders to climb up to view the magnificent African sunsets and wild animals in the bush trips that we love to take and I intend to do as much adventuring and exploring as I physically can and technology has made that possible for me and for that, I’m truly grateful.
Would I do it all over again? Well, I now need to have the other knee done (see my next blog about that piece of news) but in the meantime ask yourself this question:
What is the price you’ve paid for where you are today? And please look at it from both sides – not just how much it’s cost you doing what you did to be where you are in your life today, but what the cost is of not playing full out and living your life completely?
The time is always now. What can you do today that lights you up and makes you come alive?
This is one of my favourite quotes and it speaks directly to my question:
“Don’t ask yourself what the world needs.
Ask yourself what makes you come alive, and go do that,
Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.”
~ Howard Thurman
All my love ❤️
Sharon
