WHy are kids needing knee replacements? Got a ham radio ticket.

I am beginning to see a lot of knee replacements on very young people these days and it's all attributed to weight as far as I can see. The kids are getting too heavy and as a direct result they overload their skeletal structure and something gives.

The whole thing is really quite simple. It's like overloading a truck all the time and having the suspension give out. A half-ton truck is designed to haul a half of a ton of cargo around and that is about it. I suppose that from time to time for short hauls you can get away with overloading it a bit, but not for any real length of time.

It is pretty much the same with people. The skeletal system is nothing more than a mechanical system designed to give stability to what would otherwise be pretty shapeless and unmanuverable. It has a load limit.

A good doctor will agree with this unless he is some kid fresh out of school with a big ego.

Several years ago I busted a foot bone and got sent to a sports clinic. The doc they sent in was, of course, a sports fanatic and wanted to talk sports which is one thing I hate. I told him so a couple of times and he ignored me asking me about the Steelers. I asked him if there was an EENT clinic in the building and when he asked me why, I told him that he could get his ears fixed there.

He got upset and uppity with me and started in on how he was some kind of big shot orthopedic surgeon.

I shot back that my neighbor is a mechanic and the only difference between the two of them is that the machanic washes his hands before using the john and he washes them afterwards. He blew a fuse and stormed out.

Lady Luck was with me that day because a few minutes later an older guy came in and surpressing a pretty big smirk, told me that I was right. He said he was little more than a mechanic. He had wound up in the medical field by getting drafted. Prior to being drafted he was self-employed fixing cars and reselling them. It was an interesting story and I won't post it here.

Still, we spoke as he wrapped my foot in a cast and we chatted and he said that he was seeing a lot more young people these days with skeletal problems and that the majority of them are attributed to weight problems.

It was interesting that this doctor told me that things were a lot simpler than the AMA would like you to believe. He chided that as far as the orthopedic department went he felt he learned a lot that he took with him into medicine by simply fixing cars.

I can see that.

All of this hoople about how the body works is little more than a bunch of crap perpetrated by the AMA.

The truth is that the body is little more than an organic machine.

Like any machine, it has limits and when you put too much weight on the body the suspension system lets go.

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In other news, yesterday I got my General class Ham radio operators license.

I'm going to think things out a bit before I decide which way I am going to go with this.

I am torn between either getting a small, primitive little underpowered surplus rig or maybe an Old School Hallicrafters boatanchor type with a roomful of glowing tubes and real radio pops, whines, squeals and whistles.

I really don't think it would be as much fun to buy a new and improved super-duper high tech set and DX with, say Italy as it would be to take a lower powered Old School 1950s type piece of technology and connect with someone a state or two away.

We'll see where it goes.


my other blog is: http://officerpiccolo.blogspot.com/ http://piccolosbutler.blogspot.com/