"After years of knee pain it has finally gone!"

Jackie Willis, 74, went from being totally inactive to walking 10,000 steps a day

- 

MY HUSBAND and two sons are very active ones, they regularly go to the gym, ski every year, and my eldest, James, has done dozens of marathons. Yet I do very little exercise, and I’m the one who has bad knees!

A few years ago I started to get awful pains in my right knee. It was so bad that just walking for a couple of minutes or going up and downstairs was excruciating.

After a very long wait, I finally got an appointment to see my GP, and he said it was arthritis, basically wear and tear, and I should expect this at my age! He booked me in for an X-ray just to confirm. He went on to suggest that I should lose weight! Well, I tell you, I was gobsmacked, embarrassed, and lost for words. I’m not as slim as I used to be, but I didn’t think I was too overweight.

When I got home, I told my husband Tom what happened and questioned why I had knee problems when he and the boys were the active sporty ones, they didn’t have ‘wear and tear’ problems like me! To add insult to injury, he found it hilarious that I had been told to lose weight.

ARTHRITIS IN MY KNEE

Three weeks later I had the X-ray, it was confirmed the pain was due to arthritis and there was nothing much they could do. They mentioned that if it got really bad, I would need a knee replacement!