Old Age or a "Sport" related injury??

I went tobogganing (sledding, for you Americans) a couple months ago and used my legs to slow down over the course of a couple hours. After I got home, I realized my knees started to hurt, but the pain went away a week later. A few weeks ago, the pain came back and my knees starting feeling "loose". I've been limping everywhere since!

I went to the doctor, which then wanted to take Xrays and an MRI. I was able to get an xray right away, but since I live up north, we don't have an MRI and the waiting list is like 6 months to a year, she referred me to a physiotherapist in town to see if they could help me.

The physiotherapist told me that since I stopped snowboarding and mountain biking (due to the fact that I lived in Shanghai for 5yrs) I've been losing muscle mass. I had injuries from mountain biking and snowboarding before and my knee became agitated after the tobogganing incidents. I now need to do knee exercises along with wearing a knee brace for my patella (knee cap keeps popping). I'm told that if I don't wear a knee brace and do exercises, I'll get arthritis in a few years.

The unfortunate thing is I live up way up north in Yukon (beside Alaska, for you Americans), so there are only 2 suppliers of medical supplies up here. I have to wait a week to get a stupid knee brace that could have taken a 30 minute drive if I lived in a bigger city down south. They had one in stock, but it was the wrong size... I guess it's too much to ask to have the suppliers carry every single size of multiple brands...

I've never complained about living up north before (I actually enjoyed it), until now. The weather and lack of daylight in the winter never bothered me. What bothers me now, which I finally realize... is that I have great benefits from my employer, but I can't use them since either the service providers don't exist, or there aren't enough of them around in this small little town. What is REALLY sad (or funny) is that many people tell me that we have a lot more services in Whitehorse than the small towns in the outskirts... I think my wife is right... it's time to maybe reconsider our location of residence.