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2012 -The Beginning of The End- Nature vs. Nurture

When a child won’t take “no” for an answer, stubbornness seems to come from “your mother’s side of the family.” When a child has a bad driving record, recklessness seems to come from “your father’s side of the family.” When that child asks about their knee problems, both parents seem to subside from the finger-pointing and almost harmonize when saying “it’s from both sides of the family.”

Here’s a list [song] of joint-related numbers from my immediate family: 20,000+ fish oil supplements consumed, 1,000+ hours of physical therapy, 100s of chiropractor visits, 12 bad knees, 10 sprained fingers, 7 twisted ankles, 6 knee surgeries, “fiiiiiiiiive golden rings,” 2 finicky elbows, 1 victim of carpel tunnel, and arth-ri-tis in the maaaking.

How did both sides of my family line make it past the cave man era? Could we really have something in our genes or is it how my entire family seems to live? Being raised on a farm, everyone got their hands dirty. From sheering sheep to pulling weeds, I was a worker at a young age. As for my parents’ youth, my dad was a footballer and my mom (still acts like) an equestrian. As a family of 6 we were a big enough team for random adventures, whether that be trying to teach our horses to jump and barrel race or rolling down hills with the use of old tractor tires looking like da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitruvian_Man). Basically, we’re an active family.

When I was little I would hold my feet up to my butt and walk on my knees. At 14 years of age I misplaced my patella from dance/gymnastics (self-taught). At 20 I was play-wrestling a friend who decided to “take me down” by wrapping his leg around mine, to trip me, which he did… while tearing my meniscus and straining a few ligaments in the process. This led me to a new doctor in the area and my first knee surgery. The new doctor did a simple test: make your wrist limp, palm down. Take your thumb and try to push it towards your forearm. If your thumb touches your arm, YOU are lucky like ME! You were most likely born with soft tissue. Basically your joints are more flexible (or ‘loose’) than average. Look it up. If I had known about this earlier I would have used this medically-backed excuse to get out of cleaning poop from horse hooves and gone to the Olympics… or at least the Cirque de Soleil.

Did genes from both parents give me weak ligaments or soft tissue? Or was it their work hard/play harder ethic that got my joints into trouble? One thing is for sure, I won’t subside in the finger-pointing –so I say it’s definitely nature’s fault!