Food, Ingloriously

People have been asking about my allergies and the new things I find difficult to eat since my stomach decided that it was going to stop working properly (yay Ehlers Danlos). Also: they won’t fit on most standard forms, so I figured I’d put together a post and just link people to it. Easy.

Allergies:

Eggs (including mayonnaise)
Nuts (including almonds and pine nuts; severely allergic to pecans)
Seafood (all fish and shellfish)
Beans/ peas/ lentils (most pulses/ legumes; please note exceptions: soya, carageenan, black bean and locust bean are fine)
Chocolate
Peanuts (violently allergic)
Carob (also E410)

Intolerances: 

Acidic substances (fruits are tricky, especially fresh fruit (dried is often okay), and I specifically can’t have much tomato or citrus; onion also appears to be problematic in quantity)*
Strong spices (especially chilli)
Monosodium Glutamate (E621/ MSG)*
Aspartame/ Akesulfame K (E590/ E591)*
Sodium Metabisulphite (E223)
Sulphur Dioxide
Tartrazine (E102)*
Quinoline Yellow (E104)
Sunset Yellow FCF; Orange Yellow S (E110)*


(The intolerances aren’t going to kill me if I have them, but the ones with the * will definitely make my experience unpleasant!)

BEEFCAKE!

So, as I mentioned in my previous post, I’m back on the getting-strong trail. Finally. This mostly involves just doing lots of stuff and being active, but also some focused exercises.

For the explicitly (mostly upper-body) strength-building stuff (what I tend to call the “hench mat exercises"), I do press-ups (normal and wide-arm), planks, leg-lifts, and - when I get to that stage - chin-ups.

Once all these are relatively easy, then it’s onto more exciting gym machines, which actually means entering a gym - all these other things I currently do at home.

In the meantime, I also want to get back into free weights but without, you know, injuring myself again in the manner of a muppet. And I’d also like to ensure that I’m making the most of recovery time between exercises by eating the right foods.

So this is also an advice-asking post:

1. What/ where are good resources for finding out about free weight exercises (and advice about actual weights to use) for people who injure themselves easily yet build muscle quickly (or even just the former)?
   
   
2. What/ where are good resources for finding out about good foods to eat and drinks to drink for recovery after exercise and maximising efficiency of building muscle from exercise? So far my best bet appears to be chicken (high protein but not too heavy on my poor stomach).
   
   (I used to eat protein bars, because they’re convenient and portable and last for ages, but they’ve changed the recipe for the ones I liked (read: the only ones I found that weren’t disgusting/ allergenic) and so I’m kind of scuppered again. I’d be particularly interested in finding some new, non-allergenic (milk: fine; ton of sweetners, nuts, eggs, or chocolate: not fine) protein bars...)

I’ve been doing the Hench Mat Exercises again for a few weeks now. I’ve managed to push through the “But I don’t like it!” stage into “Oh, does today have to be a rest day?!” remarkably quickly, which is something to be happy about. The same thing happened with the bike, which was also gratifying. My main worry now is the perennial “Fay gets cocky and overdoes the exercises so that she injures herself... Again” problem.

Remarkably, I’ve only just thought about recording progress on a spreadsheet, so I can’t tell objectively if I’ve got any more adept, though it feels like I have. I know explicitly that I’m holding my planks for longer (at first I was pleased with 47 seconds (which would sink ignominiously to a bare, shaking 30 towards the end of a session), but now 01:05 is the baseline (can be as much as 01:20 to start, which then sinks to 47 seconds towards the end of a session... or rather: the middle, weirdly, then back up to 01:02). As for number (and quality) of press-ups, etc., I don’t have the data for that, so we’ll have to see...

This rambling post was brought to you by, among other things, a new medication that the specialist is trying me on, which word-suppressing funtimes side-effect is making everything more of a chore when it comes to communication.

Yay.

Back in the Saddle

Blimey. It’s been over a year since I last updated this. So what’s happened in the World of Fay Health & Fitness since then?

1. Injured myself at home on the actual day of that event. Foolishly. Luckily, it’s a neck injury I’d had before, so this time I didn’t piss around, got hold of a physiotherapist (my old one having semi-retired), and got into a bunch of new, neck-related exercises.
    
2. After recovering from foolishness, continued to do lots of cycling, but just back on a daily, get-everywhere-I-don’t-need-to-transport-gig-gear/people kind of way.
    
3. Got back into mat exercises - press-ups, crunches, planks - plus the fun addition of chin-ups, courtesy of a bar you can slot above the doorframe (and a stack of books to stand on, because I’m not that tall (despite being tall for a poet), and our house is old, so the ceilings - and therefore doorframes - are high).
    
4. Went to the Edinburgh Fringe in August to take part in the usual shenanigans, which, from a health perspective, involved:
   
   Positives: a bunch of weight-lifting (hauling my crap up six flights of stairs virtually single-handedly as my flatmate had a hernia); walking 2-3 miles/ day up and down a very steep hill (luckily, I lived at the bottom of the hill), sometimes more if I had to go home and change between shows; continuing with the daily physio exercises and the twice-a-week, more hench mat exercises.
   
   Negatives: bad/ little sleep; the usual dehydration and when-the-fuck-do-I-eat issues leading to a little weight loss; abundant and often unnecessary stress (necessary stress I can deal with).
    
5. On the final couple of days had a troubling cough and sore throat, which I powered through on sheer adrenalin and stubbornness, which transmuted into a cold as soon as I started the long drive home through the night.
    
6. Cold turned into a chest infection and laryngitis, and then… and then I couldn’t speak, sing, or anything vocal, couldn’t bend over to pick things up, couldn’t lie down flat, couldn’t eat much, was constantly coughing and had chest pains and stomach pains, and then the bit where my throat kept closing off, stopping my breathing, all of which made sleep difficult.
    
7. I lost a LOT of weight. And no-one seemed to know what was wrong. Everything hurt, everything made me cough, and the only thing I’d ever relied on my whole life - my voice - was gone. And no-one seemed to know beyond a shrug whether it would ever come back.
   
   I pushed on through work, though had a lot of sickness leave, including after a trip to A&E (waking up in the middle of the night entirely unable to breathe and retching mucus) when I was signed off for a couple more weeks after I’d only just got back to work.
   
   As you can imagine, my mental health took a steep and long fucking dive. And even the physio exercises were out for a long time because of the aforementioned not being able to lie down flat, so my joints started to suffer in a major way. I slept (hell: I lived) on the sofa for about three months for fear of waking everyone constantly with the coughing and the terrifying choking noise that happened every time I dropped into proper sleep, even when propped up perpendicularly. It was bad enough that I wasn’t sleeping…
   
   It was horrible. And then there was the (thankfully apparently a clerical error?!) cancer scare.
    
8. Slowly my voice returned to something that was at least audible (though it’s currently fucked again - yay) as I learned what I can eat and not eat (I’m even more limited now than I was before), and which drugs and supplements help and which are, at best, useless.
    
9. They still don’t know what’s wrong, but the latest notion is to put me on a very low dose of something that, at much higher doses (like: fifteen times higher), is used as an anti-depressant.
    
10. I’ve recently got back on the bike. I am still horribly unfit. But I was haemorrhaging money trying to get around town and this is worth it long-term.
     
11. I’m even more recently back on the mat exercises, after I managed to injure myself doing ill-advised free weight-lifting (yes, again) a couple of months ago, and put a crimp in the cycling and some of the physio for a while.
     
12. I’m not living my best life right now, and I think the definition of that is going to have to change, but hey - who needed creative career plans anyway…?
     

I thought I’d go back to the blog because I actually wanted to ask some dietary advice, but I’ll leave that until the next entry, because it’s a bit much to cram into a catch-up post as well…

Thanks for reading (and, to some of you, waiting so patiently).

Unwelcome Guests (in the body)

This has not been a great week, physical (and therefore mental) health-wise.

Basically, despite being Little Miss Healthy, my joints decided that the thing they really, really wanted to do was suddenly stiffen and hurt. All of them. A lot.

Now, sometimes this happens, e.g. hurting like the Devil after dancing for the first time in years, and more often than not I can point at a cause and work away from/ ignore it accordingly:

1. Dancing like a maniac/ standing for ages - the concomitant muscles/ joints hurt as you'd expect.
   
   Solution: Rest, plenty of water, stretching beforehand, bracing properly throughout standing period to prevent if possible.



2. A long period without daily physio exercises - knees in particular suffer from this one
   
   Solution: Ease back into physio (i.e. lower reps until muscles restabilised).



3. Being dehydrated - general achiness (apparently, according to my browser's spellcheck, this isn't a real word - tough) and "tiredness" of joints.
   
   Solution: The Universal one. Sorry. Well, obviously, I drink more water, and wait for recovery (a day or two).



4. Eating too much sugar - as above dehydration.
   
   Solution: again, pretty obviously cutting the sugar down, working out why I'm eating badly (tired? bored? sad? leaving meals too late, so needing a quick fix, etc.?), drinking more water and eating more protein (don't ask me: it seems to work!)

Of course, sometimes I just get the 'flu or something, which again is known and can be accounted for.

Last Thursday I started hurting. And it didn't get better and in fact progressed. It was bits that normally don't hurt this extensively (wrist, knuckles, ankles, hips, jaw) as well as the usual suspects (neck/ shoulder, knees) and some old friends (lower back, upper back). And I've now been through a whole slew of emotions, including the classics of denial, anger, bargaining and depression (with a hearty dose of fear to boot), currently wobbling in and out of acceptance.

Wise people (with much worse versions of this condition than mine) have told me to not stress, and that it's just a flare-up, just a phase; I'll be back to normal in no time. I'm more optimistic in the mornings, when I'm reasonably mobile, but right now, with my hands seizing as I type, my optimism could do with some work.

Other people have told me I should eat this magic leaf, or cut out potatoes, peppers, and tomatoes. Others are counselling NSAIDs. I am honestly struggling to stay focused on anything other than putting one foot in front of the other, and I suspect that I am a massive grump monster in the evenings.

Being me is hard work right now, and with two weeks to go before I drive myself and a big pile of equipment to Edinburgh to start the gruelling marathon of the Fringe, I'm starting to get a little troubled...

Mens sana in corpore sano

(Whut? Latin - from a poem by Juvenal - means “healthy mind in a healthy body”...)

While I’ve been more than willing to subject you all (“all” is such a big word for an average of 35 readers per post, back in this blog’s heyday) to various intimate considerations of my physical health, and while the term comes up as a tag in eight posts (nine including this one), I’ve been more reticent about my mental health.

It seems that, in some ways, I’ve suffered in the past from a dichotomous position on mental health care, similar to my approach to dieting: i.e. it’s a great thing for other people to invest time and effort in, but a mark of shame (specifically: failure) in my own self. {sigh}

Exploring why this might be seems to take us perilously quickly into stereotypical realms of family history. So let’s not. Let’s move onto the position I find myself in now, where I’ve come to view psychotherapy as being pretty much identical to physiotherapy: part of you is misaligned in a way that makes you uncomfortable and takes up energy that you could be spending on much more productive activities; discussing things with an expert in the field and following some of their advice to realign things, trusting your own judgement as well as theirs, seems pretty sensible.

Just as with physiotherapy, finding a good psychotherapist whose approach suits you (and, maybe more specifically, has the ability to take the you that you are now and help you on the way to transforming to the you you want/ need to be) is pretty key. And finding ways to keep going with their advice and guidance between sessions will give you a lot more benefit (and save you a bunch more money) than putting all your dependence on them to “fix” you. Ideally, they will help you develop the tools you need to get to the place you want to be in.

We still, as a society, seem to have a prevalent view that physical and mental health are separate things (denoted by separate names!). I’m pretty sure that this is, long-term, an unhelpful notion. It would be great if we could get onto speaking in terms of “health” and leave it at that, moving onto the specifics (knee pain, asthma, eczema, depression, dissomnia, vertigo, migraine, agoraphobia, broken arm, etc.) if necessary.

The thing is, it’s all part of a system. Your mental health affects your physical health, and your physical health affects your mental health. Whether or not you subscribe to an idea of an incorporeal mind and a physical brain, the mind’s direction would still prompt the brain to make changes in the body based on electrical and chemical shifts. It’s an actual, physical thing that your mind does to your body. The same impulses that mean you can direct your hand to pick up a drink and tip, swallow, set down again, etc., can also make more insidious changes.

We still have Stone Age bodies connecting with rapidly-adapting brains, technology, environments, and social structures. The responses that were designed to get us out of life-threatening, physical danger quickly are being applied to much less urgent, but much longer-term stressors. Stress chemicals hang around in our bodies much longer than they were ever designed to do, to the detriment of our immune systems, hearts, lungs, blood pressure, digestion, adrenal glands, skin, hair, eyesight... pretty much you name it, actually...  In other words, our life-saving response to stress is now killing us (those of us who live in a mechanised society/ have non-physical jobs).

So it’s important to look after your mental health, because it’s you, isn’t it? And if you’re all over looking after your physical health, you need to be looking after your mental health, because it’s all the same thing. In order to get started on (and maintain!) a decent physical health regime, your motivation and discipline need to be right - and this includes not overdoing it and harming yourself with it too.

Look, I’m not one of those people who’s going to tell you that you can cure your own cancer by thinking right, and that colds are happening because you’re mentally lazy, but I am someone who’s read the research that indicates that recovery from any illness or injury is massively affected by mental attitude (for interest: you’re better off either being in strenuous denial or full-on determination to beat it than apathetic acceptance that there’s nothing you can do), and that, since cancer can be fought off by the immune system (we’re apparently all exposed to it multiple times during our lifetime - we only notice when we haven’t fought it off), and stress affects the immune system, good mental health can only help when it comes to preventing/ fighting off cancer.

And, let’s face it, your physical health affects your mental health - long-term pain is a git for wearing you down; illness makes you feel groggy and unlike your usual self; revelling in the fitness and strength of your body can help your sense of mental resilience, etc.

This is all a round-about way of saying that, for the last couple of months, I’ve been seeing a psychotherapist, and will continue to do so until I’m in a position where I feel like I’ve realigned what I’m capable of realigning for the moment. Unlike in previous goes over the years (the first one was great, but the second one was far too insecure, and the third one was an old-school Freudian overly-concerned about whether I was breastfed...), the current therapist appears to be a good fit for my world views, and visiting her appears to have given me the stable base from which I can ask difficult questions of myself in the meantime, and answer them too. There’s something curiously empowering about the thought that, as regularly/ frequently as I need it, there’s a safe space where I can go to express being as angry/ unhappy/ jubilant/ proud/ messed-up as I am without fearing social punishment, and from there move onto working out ways of realigning what’s causing me to be less than I could be, because misaligned stuff needs to be brought into the light before you can start tinkering with it.

Go metaphors.

See, this blog is about my quest to become closer to what I can be. (Remember Maslow and self-actualisation?) And that includes emotional and other mental function. I was born with certain physical issues that make fitness harder (hypermobility, asthma, etc.), and given others by the misguided actions of others (food allergies, generally crappy immune system), and wrought some of them myself (the gimpy RTA-shoulder, for example) and these are things that can be managed, overcome, worked around, etc., with some extra support and persistence, and with imagination and the right research and information. The same goes for my mental/ emotional issues - presumably some of it I was born with, some I achieved, and others I had thrust upon me. If they were different, or more profound, likely I’d need medication, like I do for other long-term conditions that no amount of exercise will change (asthma, for example), but that doesn’t seem to be the case.

My emotional resilience is already improved, and my assertiveness has increased. It’s like watching the way that persisting in physical exercise has seen my stamina, strength, and confidence improve, and for approximately the same reasons. Also in common: the mental/ emotional challenges outside of my comfort zone hurt like blazes the first time or two (see: dancing, cycling, weight machines), but that pain fades into strength if I keep going, especially if I give myself space either side of the early/ quantum-change challenges (and recognise which pain is useful and which potentially damaging... and then stop the latter).

This brand of psychotherapy isn’t forever, but it’s right for where I want to get to now, and that’s the best I can ask for! :) I'm going to continue to feel proud of the work I've done already, and the achievements yet to come - both physically and mentally.

Just Do It #4

Quick, throwaway "motivational" phrases can be helpful, especially when you're exhausted and your body's drenched in adrenalin, and the buffer zones of carefully-constructed cognition are crumbling in the face of your inner waaah that just wants to give up and go home and, incidentally, eat a large plate of biscuits, or possibly ALL THE CHEESE.  So this tag series is for those small pre-fabricated tools that help me get the chuff on with it.

So, my lovely mattress has given up the ghost.  This, along with a dodgy, cheap pillow (below the expensive, super-supportive one), are helping neither the Neck/ Shoulder Injury of Doom™ nor my already crappy sleep quality.  In the course of following up on what happens when you Google "best mattress for hypermobility" (turns out I got it spot-on with the Wondermattress - go my instincts, go!), I came across this blog:

http://www.lifewitheds.com

The author has way more invisible conditions than I have (including some I'd never heard of), but had documented her search for The Perfect Mattress (for, among other things, hypermobile joints), so I was intrigued to read (along with various forum posts) about how difficulty getting exactly the right sleeping posture is very common among those with HMS and EDS.

Scrolling down, on the right, I saw this:


Do what you can, when you can, while you can:

Seemed to pretty much sum it up for me.

The Shape of Desire

Part of yesterday's conversation with the physio was her questioning why I'm doing the (upper-body) exercises that I'm doing.  Why am I lifting weights, doing press-ups, etc.?

In particular, she was concerned that these exercises were a bit, well, male.  She covered, elucidating, saying there was nothing wrong with that per se, but that she was wondering: was I wanting to be a body-builder [cue hunched shoulders and loosely-raised fists]?

Well, there it is.  Why am I doing this?  Why am I pushing muscles in my upper body that were not designed by nature to be massive (due to HMS and, well, a lower testosterone level than the average bloke) to build?

Several answers, not all of which may be either wise, feasible, or even the whole story:

1. In October 2005 I had a six-pack and could lift sofas without much effort.  I also had the kind of lightly but defined muscular physique that made both women and men go "hmmm..." and "ooooh...!" with a little reaching-out gesture. (Yeah, baby...)

a) Being strong felt good physically - my wobbly joints were much more secure.

b) Being strong felt good mentally - being able to rely on myself and feel comfortable (even superior) in my body was rather nice.

c) My personal vanity is, perhaps, a little odd.  The resources needed to conform to many elements of acceptable Western femininity feel like way more trouble than they're worth, to me.  However, I revel in decking myself in a certain way as I move through the world.  I want people to see me, at a glance, as very much my own person, as attractive in an unconventional sense, and blending elements across genders.  I also like to look healthy.  So a little ripped (again)? Yes please! :)

(I felt right at home in Cambridge really quickly.  Wonder why...)


2. I gave up on that level and type of healthy after several things happened:

- motorbike (okay, fine: scooter) accident that made Borked Shoulder the way it is today (February 2006).

- massive (they took photos for a medical journal!) benign tumour;

- recovering from the surgery that removed it (vertical 5" abdominal incision - wasn't allowed to pick up anything heavier than 5kg for, well, a while - September 2007);

- the knee-based accident (and all the other, less easily pointed-at elements) that propelled me into the Year of The Stick (September 2011); and

- subsequent slow recovery from that.

I started feeling old.  I let myself become dispirited by the constant setbacks (I tried building in strength in 2006; scuppered myself lifting furniture; tried getting fit again 2010-11, not as hard as now, but cycling everywhere... then Stick Year... and then again in the summer of 2013...); I rationalised it as "I'm not meant to be fit", I think. And yet clearly this other model of me persisted underneath the whole time, because now I'm thinking: screw old, there are people who take up marathon running in their 70s.  I want to take this body as far as it can in terms of healthy, fit, and strong.


3. I don't want a male physique, I want a strong female physique, and I don't think I'll get that purely from physio exercises - I'll need to challenge myself, not just maintain myself.  I'm also pretty sure it would take more effort, time, and calories than I would consider worth spending getting perturbingly "bulky".


4. Up until now, not one single person (male or female) has told me that I shouldn't do press-ups, etc.

My dad (the very one who's struggled with my gender queerity in recent years) showed me how to do them; and a recent boyfriend showed me the variations on the theme.  We did them in school, and we were expected to do them in the few martial arts lessons I attended.  They're part of my model for "becoming fit and strong".


5. I enjoy doing weights, press-ups, planks, etc. Not only do I think they're fun (look, I'm a bit weird, just give up and go with this), but I enjoy being able to do them well (possibly in a tomboyish, showing-off-physically kind of way).


So here's the thing I'm going to try to find a way to say succinctly to the physio: this is the kind of body I want to aim for.  It's not unfeasible, and it's not toxic, so please help me get to a point where I can make that happen.  Ta!

So, unless anyone's got any better perspectives, that's The Plan.

Body Blow

I walked out of the physio's this afternoon, clutching my hat against the wind and squinting against the sunlight, muttering certain anatomical terms.

The news had been mixed.

The good news first:

1. I'm doing a lot of things right.

2. The general prognosis isn't as bad as I'd assumed from what she said last week.  I may, after all, be fine as I get older.  Nothing is certain.

3. That dumb move is a) unlikely to have done much damage, b) not beyond the realms of possibility for me to do in future.

4. The Walk is still on.


Bad news:

1. Something's clearly gone wrong and The Dumb Move only exacerbated it.  The thing that's gone wrong is cerebro-spinal.  Hence the pins-and-needles, numb patches, and other weird symptoms that have been plaguing me with increasing intensity since December.

2. I've been doing some things wrong - who knew I should change up weights for different muscles?  Oh, you did?  Nice...  I'll ask you next time...

3. No upper-body work for, well, a while.  A really vague while but the phrases "you're not going to be pleased about this" and "longer than you'd like" have been bandied about.

So no free weights, press-ups, rowing-machine, weights machine. I didn't ask about planks.  I suspect that since the repsonse to "does it put stress on your shoulder and neck" is "yes", I've got my answer.


And we talked more about HMS and agreed that, while yes - constant pain is dispiriting and draining, and damn-near-inevitable injury in the course of working to make yourself less prone to injury is demoralising - it could be a lot worse, and - bar Dumb Moves - I'm doing pretty well.

I know people who have been made pretty much housebound by this or similar conditions.  I know people who sublux and dislocate at the drop of a hat. I've met people who're in their 20s and far more debilitated and in pain than I am on a daily basis.  I'm not sure whether that makes the pain I have to cope with any better, but it does put it in perspective.  It's worth managing it, and keeping on doing the right things, and learning from (and not punishing myself for) setbacks.

In other words: everything I said in that poem last night.  So well done me.

Bleh

Today is a Bad Joints Day.  Not only the usual suspects: Borked Shoulder, Particularly Bad Knee, Grinchy Neck Section, Dodgy Wrist, and Whingey Lower Back, but pretty much everything else as well.  The knees feel swollen, and everything is particularly clicky, achey, or twisted.

Yay.  No gym for me tonight.  This, combined with general increase in clumsiness and fine motor control near-absence today and yesterday leads me to conclude several things:

1. Sleep deprivation is a major key in pain perception/ management

Sleep has been very absent lately, especially over the last two nights.

2. I need to drink more on busy days

Like way more.

3. I have entered the "secretory" phase of my menstrual cycle

O hai progesterone, come to make a fuss, have you?

4. Standing around lots really does knacker my knees, especially when carrying heavy stuff

Seriously.

5. There may be some other factor that I'm not figuring in that is pulling everything else out of alignment

e.g. diet (sugar? acid? protein? calcium? something else?), the actual weight carried while walking/ standing, emotional stress, etc.


One of the things that worries me about, well, all of the above, is that the weekend of The Walk is a busy one, and that's got some real implications for stamina/ injury/ enjoyment on the day and recovery afterwards.

The day/ evening beforehand is a choir concert.  Judging by last time, this means: lots of standing; not much fluid intake (you don't want to rush to the loo in the middle of the gig); and a late night finish, which includes eating late.  Boo.

On the evening of the the day itself is a poetry gig that I run.  Judging by, well, every time, this means: a fair amount of standing; lots of heavy lifting (including up and down stairs); not much fluid intake (as organiser, you find yourself forgetting); and a really late night finish, which includes eating late. Double-boo.

And both will involve a fair amount of emotional stress, of different types, as well as likely to be taking place during the same less-than-ideal phase of my menstrual cycle.

Oh dear.

The Big Day is five weeks away and I have, as yet, to do any of the long walks necessary to check my ability to walk the increasingly long distances on the graph on the way up to six whole miles.  I just typed the phrase "Things keep getting in the way." and looked at it in disappointment and a measure of horror.

Oh deary me.

So the next five weeks are going to see:

1. A new sleep strategy (and set of tactics to match)

Don't ask me yet - I need to work this out.

2. A dry run of "drinking more and standing around less" for the next poetry event

Can't hurt...

3. More physio advice

She offered something I was tempted to take her up on.  Now that looks like a Very Good Idea Indeed™

4. Cracking on with the nutritionist advice

Any suggestions for good ones in Cambridge?

5. A new mattress

Mine is completely scuppered; time to spend some money.

6. Actually doing a long walk

No excuses.

7. Reading up more on hypermobility

There must be more I could be doing that I haven't thought of yet...


So watch this space, basically.

Syncopation

I only remember when it was because my brother had been given a copy of the book of Labyrinth, and I'd been given something... forgettable, and - to my mind - infinitely inferior and unfairly girly.  I suspect it was Boxing Day.  We were bundled into the car with little explanation and yet - surprisingly - my mother was driving.  My father's tolerance for other people driving, especially a car with him in it, has never been what a body might describe as capacious.  This prompted questions that were shut down abruptly, so I sulked back into Anne of Green Gables, or Little Women, or whatever it was I'd been gifted.

I have to assume that this made it late December 1986 or 87.  I was definitely adolescent, and inclined to question my parents on pretty much everything anyway.  I don't have a clear memory of when it became apparent that we were heading to hospital; it kind of jump-cuts to my dad in the hospital bed, bare-chested, strapped to a bunch of machines that went beep.

As an aspirant doctor, I was intrigued.  As a person with an annoying book and a low boredom threshold, I was doubly so.  I appear to have refused to get worried about my dad.  I left that to afterwards.  It's been a pattern I've maintained and established for most of my life - deal with the thing in front of you, then freak out when it's safe to do so.  So I asked many questions and watched everyone's expressions, and learned about ideal electrocardiograph patterns and cardiac dysrhythmia, and how to make the best of the terrifying frustration of abruptly-drawn hospital curtains, and medical staff body language. Also that there's no way to persuade my brother out of a book he's got until he's actually read it.  I have a similar disposition, as it goes, so I can't blame him...

Happily, my father was discharged a day later (I think), and came home (where he still is) with some stern advice from fellow-doctors (I imagine that's particularly difficult to take!) about diet and exercise.

Research indicates that "Type A" personalities (competitive, time-driven, impatient, pro-active workaholics possessed of covert free-floating hostility) are more prone to cardiac incidents (I suspect that part of this is being prone to pushing through physical symptoms as signs of weakness...) than the more chilled dudes occupying the Type B category.  All of this is over-simplistic, but does appear to have a reasonable amount of basis in the results.  The key thing here, though, with regard to my unnecessary 12-hour-shift-working, impatient, explosively-tempered father is that Type A personalities are way less likely to re-infarct than their less competitive brethren. i.e. if someone sends two people home from a cardiac incident: one Type A and one Type B, with the same advice (exercise more, cut down on fatty foods, eat more oat bran (this was the 80s)), the Type B presumably says "eh, I start all that tomorrow; I'll just chill for now." The Type A, driven little bugger, is likely to go "I will be the best at not getting another heart attack!" and duly goes on to lose the weight, do the exercise, and eat oat bran like a boss.  Behold, that - oddly enough - works and Type As, surviving the first one, are less likely to die prematurely of a heart attack than Type Bs in a similar position.

Why this combined Fay Family History/ classic psychology text summary?

My dad was only a couple of years older than I am now at the time. This factoid impacts on the resolution made later in this post. We share many phenotypical expressions of our genes (more than you might imagine, at first glance) and a fair number of personality traits, including - probably most significantly - stubbornness...

None of the chronic conditions I've lived with all my life - to the best of my knowledge - are degenerative.  Manage them well and asthma, allergies, etc. will just bimble along without scaring you too much.  Oh except when they won't:

Apparently, I can only really look forward to the chronic discomfort of Hypermobility Syndrome (HMS) getting worse as I age, especially after the menopause.  This... was a bit of a shock, and made an already-annoying Thursday just that bit more fun.  And it only properly struck me some time later, so today's exercise was accompanied by a crushing sense of "what the hell is the point if it's all just going to get worse anyway?!"  Yay motivation!

But I plodded on through the physio moves (not well, but I did) and onto the mat exercises.  I carefully did the leg raises and didn't push them into Bad Pain.  I moved onto the press-ups and thought "You know what? Sod it.  I'm not that high on the HMS scale as it is and I'm going to be the best at being a muscle-bound person compensating for HMS that there is." Like many other things, being entirely pain-free and comfortable is something that will belong in memory and I will celebrate the relatively good days when they come and treat myself kindly (but not over-indulgently) on the bad days. Because a life lived in fear of pain - of anything, come to it - is pretty spectacularly rubbish.  (Obviously I didn't articulate this all in the middle of press-ups, but the "sod it" bit definitely came across...)

I've lived that life before, because that was the only model I was given and - you know what? - it sucked. I am occasionally extremely bitter about the waste of my life due to that inherited pigswill, but - looking back - you can see that I was always trying to break out of it (despite this, historically, leading to a good kicking by those holding the fear-reins), and to many people's eyes I'm sure that it's long looked like I did.

The post I had originally been going to write this morning about the "oh, hey, your condition will only worsen" news was far more maudlin.  Instead, I had a 4-hour "nap" (answering my body's actual need rather than "pushing through" needlessly), and then did my pre-planned exercise and ate well.  I feel ferociously better and am writing this so as to have a touchstone for that "well, if this is the best it's going to get, I'm darned well going to extend this for as long as possible" resolution.

Fit that on a motivational poster...