Karen Darke had felt pain in her left shoulder for so long that she felt “held together” by supportive tape intended to relieve pressure on muscles and joints. When she went to a doctor, he told her she had the shoulders of an 80 year old – in her 40s – and would need corrective surgery and probably a shoulder replacement at some point.
A geologist, Karen was working in the Bolivian Andes when an accident left her paralysed from the chest down. She took up the sport of hand cycling, and went on to win gold for Britain in Rio de Janeiro in 2016. It was after the win in 2016 that her shoulder hurt, and she found herself feeling “completely misaligned” after eight years of gruelling training.
She had been prepared for the risk of depression after the Olympics, which is a known phenomenon among athletes. To combat this, she had planned a trip to cycle 1,500km through Patagonia with two teammates and one of their wives. When she told them she wasn’t sure if she was up to it due to her run-down condition, they encouraged her to go.
The group cycled through villages, some hundreds of kilometres apart. Karen’s story is shared in the book Wilder Journeys: True Stories of Nature, Adventure & Connection, edited by Laurie King and Miriam Lancewood. In it, Karen writes of the pleasure of reconnecting with nature again, adding: “For all the comforts offered by our modern world, I can think of no substitute more satisfying than lying on the grass watching a sinking sun after a day moving through the great outdoors, listening to the soothing bubble of a nearby stream and the crackle of a small fire”.
After days of cycling, allowing her mind to drift and focus just on the kilometres ahead and enjoying the nature surrounding her, Karen writes that she feels like she is “waking up from a long coma”. Her shoulder stops hurting, and her movement is no longer limited when reaching or stretching. She no longer has need of any shoulder surgery, and writes that she will later phone to cancel it.
Karen’s story is a truly remarkable one, and this is just one episode within it. But it is a fascinating example of a serious intervention being planned for a patient (in this case surgery) and then later cancelled after a change in lifestyle – in this case trading an urban lifestyle focussed on a gruelling training regime for a reconnection to nature at a different pace.