Comment by tomxor

> I've got ten screws in my spine now. Carrying around a pack and getting stuck on a mountain is not good. Bicycling really hurts. I developed some kind of elbow bursitis that won't go away no matter what and 20 minutes on a rock wall and my arm is absolutely throbbing now, for days. There doesn't seem to be anything I can do to stop it.

By the way sorry i completely skipped over these problems in my sibling comment, i realise that probably came off as insensitive and dismissive. I'm really sorry you're in that position, I was too focused on the more general advice.

These kinds of chronic injuries are sometimes unavoidable, and sometimes they are avoidable but very difficult to spot or know about before it's too late.. I suppose it's a risk, and some people are simply luckier than others. However some chronic injuries can be remedied if the source of the issue is in how you approach your sport, rather than a more permanent issue.

Shoulder, elbow and finger injuries and pain are extremely common in long term climbers, and can usually be substantially improved or eliminated by improving your technique and form. I would highly recommend reading Dave McLeods book on injury prevention. It's the very opposite of a quick fix book and can be quite dense in places, but it's also enlightening and completely destroys the fallacy that these types of sports are only for the young - in short, you are always hurting your body in some way when doing exercise, you were just less aware of it when younger and had a larger sink before it became apparent, when some people reach the limit of that sink they give up, others find ways to continue. More generally If you can manage the rate of stress with the rate of recovery, then you can establish an equilibrium and it's possible to safely continue as you get older, I'm still learning this (will probably always be learning this) and trying to figure out how to be more aware of different aspects of my body and the hidden stresses it's putting up with.

Even if it's not climbing you are interested in continuing, there is a lot to learn about the deficiencies in more niche sports in general from this book and Dave's research.