Good as new?

I sprained my ankle a couple of weeks ago. After a trip to the emergency room, x-rays, a week of crutches, ice and heating pads, it was pronounced "okay" by my doctor. I am amazed at how well it has healed, although it strikes me that this healing at my age of 50 is not the same as the healing of a sprained ankle when I was a teen. When I was younger, I didn't use crutches, limped around on the ankle and re-injured it, and yet it was "good as new" after two weeks. Now, being more, uh, mature, my ankle two weeks after the accident is only slightly swollen. I can, with effort, maneuver it into a shoe other than the tennis shoes I have been wearing since the swelling went down enough to force my foot into a loosely-laced tennis shoe. I am still slow in going down stairs. (If I had been cautious like that before, I could have avoided the sprain entirely, but what would be the fun in that?) My foot isn't "good as new," but it does have a new ache that I think will be quite handy in predicting weather changes.

And, all of those little wounds of youth that healed "good as new" are not really gone, either. They are now the cumulative odd aches and pains that strike us suddenly when we get up from a chair or move too quickly in later years. If you are around my age or better, you know what I am talking about. That cramp in your leg or quick zing in your shoulder? Where did that come from? If it comes out of nowhere and goes away quickly, it may just be "good as new."