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).

Progress and Technology

Hello!

Well, it's been a while, but I thought I'd give you an update.  Preferably one nothing to do with slightly scary mental health stuff.

So today I'll be talking about:

1. Training for the Sport Relief 2016 Challenge (sponsor me here)
2. Technology
3. General Health stuff

1. Training for the Sport Relief 2016 Challenge

This has been less fun that it could be - partly because I got ill between Christmas and New Year, and could (fairly) directly attribute that to going out on a training ride late in the day, getting cold with an exercise-induced lowered immune system, and then, instead of going straight home, went to the shop for food (a move that seemed logical at the time) where clearly some infectious bastard breathed on me. Garh

So what with having funtimes with breathing, then injuring myself (minor standard neck/ shoulder stuff), then the winds being insanely strong, I somehow let training drift into a puddle of excuses. I was still cycling pretty much everywhere (work, social engagements in Cambridge, choir rehearsals, anything where I didn't need to tote much gear) else, but no particularly challenging distance.

And then I checked my magical spreadsheet, which showed me that I only had a few weeks to go, and that I'd spent nigh-on two months not training. Eeeep! Instead of a steady increase of ≤½ mile every session, I was going to have to jump up more emphatically each time, especially if I stepped back to a shorter distance to kick back off again (because, despite being foolish, I do learn - slowly - from my past mistakes with exercise).

Mon 28-Dec-15: 16.4 miles, 1:39:32 hours (64% of end goal)



Wed 24-Feb-16: 10.1 miles, 0:57:14 hours (39% of end goal)



Sun 28-Feb-16: 12.6 miles, 1:11:38 hours (49% of end goal)



Sun 6-Mar-16: 15.5 miles, 1:29:16 hours (60% of end goal)



Wed 9-Mar-16: 17.7 miles, 1:41:25 hours (69% of end goal)



I am still aching after this last one (cold, damp, mizzly, long; an exercise in self-discipline/ persuasive self-talk), and currently wondering two things:

a) How much of a percentage of the end goal should I aim for?

b) Should I do a training cycle on the Wednesday before the Sunday 20th ride, or am I better off having a rest (apart from work cycling) that week?

2. Technology

After agonising over gadgets, I found the one that was the best fit: a FitBit Charge HR. Of all the things that I wanted an activity tracker to do/ be, it only doesn't do one of them: GPS tracking. On the other hand, it (along with its concomitant app) does everything else, and things I didn't even know I wanted it to do (and some other things - like calorie counting - that I'm resolutely ignoring).  It's good at working out when I've been cycling for short stretches, but the longer ones confuse it, so I have to manually record them, which isn't exactly taxing.

It's proving useful for helping me keep track of (and manage by increasing) my water intake, gamifying my fitness efforts, and it looks slinky on my wrist (it functions as an actual watch as well).

It's also proving useful during anxiety - it turns out that the thumping heart sensations are often misleading: my heart-rate will rise slightly, but not anything like as much as it feels. This is proving remarkably helpful in swift calming and fending off potential full-blown attacks.

And I've bought a fancy water bottle that's easy to carry around work (I saw someone else with one and desired it greatly), means I don't use up lots of plastic cups (yay environment), and measures much more precisely how much I've drunk during the day at work/ during cycle rides.

3. General Health stuff

I am generally well. However, my hip joints (especially my right one) are not. I have been mostly ignoring this and trying to find comfortable positions, but the "it's reliably achey by 10pm" rule has shifted to "it's reliably achey all the damned time and difficult to bear by 10pm".  And now the right one keeps going out of alignment when I get up from a chair and start walking. Unfun. So I need to go and see someone about this.  Sadly, my former physiotherapist has now retired, so I will need to begin the Quest for a Local Physiotherapist Who Actually Understands HMS/ EDS all over again, though armed with more knowledge than last time I started.

My lower left-hand back aches reliably after about 6-7 miles of continuous cycling; less if hills are involved.  I've been advised that I need to get my posture on the bike checked and the bike's setup amended by experts.  As in all things requiring experts, this is not cheap.  If it prevents some further physiotherapy sessions, mind, it'll be worth it.

I forgot to renew my gut medication prescription last week.  This will NEVER HAPPEN AGAIN.  I have come to rely on not being in constant abdominal agony - turns out I'm on PPIs for life. A small price to pay unless, of course, the NHS is dismantled. O_o

I'm beginning to see why people with my condition (especially those with more severe versions) get into a cycle of morphine use.  I'm still avoiding even paracetamol unless my neck's particularly bad and I want to sleep (and nothing I've got touches migraines, so there's no point there either), so we'll see how long I can keep this straight-edge attitude to pain management up...


Thanks for reading so far! :D More updates to come, more frequently and smaller, especially in the run-up to the Sunday 20th challenge. Did I mention that you can sponsor me...?! :D

Steps Forward and Back

So, I'm back on the bike again. What do you mean, you didn't know I was off it...?!

{Checks back catalogue; curses}

Okay, so, it looks like a) I've been somewhat quiet on this front, and b) history repeated itself a bit.  Here's what happened over the intervening months since my last post:

1. Cycling every day (pretty much; certainly work days when I didn't have gig gear to carry, and Wednesdays when I had real life people meetings in places).

2. Physio every day (EVERY day; like a BOSS).

3. Mat exercises twice a week (come on!).

4. Eating a balanced diet.

And then August happened.  And August has Edinburgh Fringe in it. So no cycling from 19th August onwards, but lots of walking, and a handy new wearable gadget that maps how much and where I walked (because my passive movement tracking app stopped working).

So I scaled Arthur's Seat (yay!) and even coached someone else up it (come on!). Didn't even injure myself, unless you count sunburn.  I even kept up my physio and the strength-building mat exercises (despite some logistical difficulties - you try doing crunches on a mat on a polished wooden floor... without sliding across it and into a table).

And then I fell over on my face on a simple walk back down an urban hill, a couple of days later, and lots of health things cascaded, including my one filling jarring free and me getting a lot of pain and then a rubbish temporary filling which didn't let me chew so my nutrition was difficult to maintain and yeah - living off liquid food makes you lose more weight than you're comfortable with, if you're me.

Arse.

And then the trip back from Edinburgh with Too Much Luggage and bad lifting form and behold - buggered wrist.

So I was sensible - cycling hurt my wrist, so I paused on cycling and did some stretching and strengthening exercises for the wrist, and stayed off the press-ups, etc.  Then I got back on the bike. Yay! Then I got back into the mat exercises. Now, bear in mind that I hadn't done any since August, because I didn't - I just charged on ahead regardless like someone who was intent on injuring myself. Which I did.

This was 30th September. 1st October I got on the bike, unaware of how much I'd buggered myself. By the time I was heading home, it was clear that what I needed to do was immobilise that joint as much as possible.

It's nice to find that I've learned something.  I didn't prevent the injury this time, but I prevented it getting worse.  I immobilised as much as possible, asking for help, reducing movement, adjusting everything I could to ensure that as little strain was put upon the joint as possible. (Except on Thursday 8th when I joined in a yoga conversation in work and decided to demonstrate that I shouldn't do a certain move by doing it. 24 hours of migraine-like pain later and I'd learned another lesson about hypermobile injuries.)

So apart from yoga foolishness, I am pretty much recovered (read: it still hurts a bit but I can use it and I was more stressed by not being active) and back on the bike,  I cycled to Milton Country Park on Sunday with a friend to do some walking and wittering, then to and from work yesterday and today.

It was somewhat sobering to look back at the previous two blog entries and think: oh, so exactly like 3-4 months ago, huh? I left behind some good advice for myself, though, so that's a blessing.

In preparation for 20th March - Sport Relief again, baby - I'm going to be setting up a plan for increasing activity, strength, endurance, and general fitness. I'll keep you all posted as to what's next...

So, what's the current state of play (physical health-wise), all told? I am still a little hurty in the shoulder-neck joint and in my right wrist, and I'm finding it hard to put the weight back on. (And yes, I've tried eating all the biscuits - all that happened was I felt like crap. Presumably I need to eat a bunch of steaks and cheese.  Who knows?  All I know is that there are very, very few people out there who want to talk about the problems of losing too much weight and discussing how to put it back on.) So there it is.

Changing Relationships

So, I’ve blogged before about pain. About what “stop comes before ow” really means and how you can be guided by, but also ignore pain if needs be.

As I get more into the old exercise regime, the more pain I’m experiencing.  Some of it is “good” pain - e.g. the stiffening and burning of artfully-shredded muscle fibres that are on their first steps to growing back thicker.  Some of it is “bad” pain - e.g. the twanging of a shoulder joint that’s experienced injury due to superfluous effort in a less-advisable position.

Now, I’m prone - like probably every enthusiastic bendy - to overdoing things, breaking myself, and having to take a break from exercise as a result.  This has been well-documented in me, even as recently as last year’s big fitness push, and I find myself there again, having gone too hard on the old press-ups last week and now having unilateral neck pain, and pins-and-needles in my left arm due to a twanged shoulder. (Yes, it’s The Particularly Borked Shoulder.)

But something occurred to me last week, as I was going up the stairs and thinking: “yep, this is an injury, not just a post-exercise burn” - it’s not a disaster.

Let’s say that again: It’s Not A Disaster.

In the past, the pattern has been: start exercise regime, forget sensible approach after a couple of goes (at most) and overdo things so that an established weak point is compromised, curse a lot, rest for ages, start again only after I’m really fed-up of being unfit.

And I’ve managed to manage that somewhat - I’ve been building more slowly (last week notwithstanding), being more alert to potential injury, stopping sooner, and giving myself space to recover before getting back into things without leaving it so long that I’m actually more prone to injury if I try coming back in at the same level.

But in the past it’s been all: oh! ow! and then beating myself up for a muppet. Catastrophising the pain and popping myself in the victim box all over again. The pain is punishment! The pain is validation! The pain is a full-stop!

Waaaiit... rewind - the pain is validation?  Hmm, sounds like some kind of brain weasel talk to me. And it’s a problem that, the more I think about it, the further it goes back for me.

There’s an awkward balance to be struck when your body is limited in a particular way.  You have to own it in order to manage it.  But sometimes that very self-definition can take you deeper into NOT managing it.  Speaking for my own situation, it’s useful for me to say: “Because of underlying weakness and historical issues, I stand a much greater chance of injury if I lift things above shoulder height, so I’ll avoid doing that.” It’s less useful to say: “I’m limited, so I can’t lift things, so I won’t.”  It’s useful to acknowledge where pain stops being a good guide and is just distressing/ distracting/ a sleep-killer.  It’s less useful to shy away from all pain and hold myself in a kind of twitching huddle in a corner, hemmed in by painkillers and fear, outraged because I’m not pain-free.

Because I’m never going to be pain-free.  I don’t know about anyone else, but I know I’m always experiencing pain somewhere at any given time. There are some Usual Suspects, but sometimes they all kick off, and sometimes it’s a new place, and  most times it’s only one or two of them.

But if I define myself purely by my pain, and use that as an excuse not to do things: I Am A Limited Person, Here Is My Badge Of Pain, that’s, well, frankly a bit rubbish.  Pain as validation as a lesser being is a weird circular argument that does no-one any good. I wouldn’t expect anyone else to be able to get away with that, so why me?

And pain is clearly not a full-stop. That was the conclusion on the stairs - if I see the muscle burn of good exercise as a landmark on the way to becoming more awesome, I need to start treating the Usual Suspect Injury Pains as landmarks as well, somehow. Whether as a learning point of how far not to push things, or some kind of psychological step on the route to better self-acceptance, or better ability to ignore unfixable pain, there must be some use in it, and seeing it as a full-stop disaster where I swoon in a bower and wait for some bugger to come rescue me is helping no-one.

Not entirely sure where I’m going with this yet, but this feels like a positive realisation, and a potentially very useful mental tool.

Catching Up…

Well, I appear to be back. Which is an interesting place to be.  Let's review where I went:

In December I'd already been cycling to and from work, and in January had started sessions with an exercise trainer who'd done lots of reading up on HMS/ EDS (and seemed to know more than me) and was feeling quite chipper about my physical health.  My lungs had started to "open up" again, and I was feeling a lot of the benefits of being more physically active.

Then in mid-late-February I injured my neck badly. (Please don't ask how: from experience, we'll both regret it.) Now, I'm used to injuring my neck - it's a bit par for the course with the way my hypermobility works. So I left it alone, doing all the usual right things (reduce burden, immobilise, sleep a certain way) that usually sorts it out within 48 hours.

Then I got back on the bike.  And it became clear really quickly that this wasn't going away, even though it waxed and waned, and I'd have to stop doing an exercise that relied on me being able to look over my shoulder as I no longer could.  I went to my usual physio, who assessed me (yes, I was right: I'd injured something in a different part of my neck from usual, and it was a generally unusual place to boot), gave me some exercises, and asked me to come back.  In the meantime, I was back in taxis and buses, spending a bunch of money on that and physio.  Which, it turned out, didn't work - my neck was busted badly.  She suggested I get X-rayed, and a desperately frustrating cycle of annoyance and admin kicked off.

Short version:

5 second X-ray from one angle - nothing to see, reported by SMS. Wow.
10 minute examination by rheumatoid specialist - you don't have EDS. Er, okay, but why...? Go to a physio. Yeah, er, thanks...
30 minute back-and-neck massage from 19-year-old at a spa in Cardiff - regained at least 50% range of mobility. WOW! {tears of joy}

By this point, it was mid-May. Once the range was back enough for me to at least vaguely look over my right shoulder, I got back on the bike, and back into the mat exercises.

One small problem - a persistent cough that started with a bad cold on 1st May. This is buggering my sleep, which means that I spent a while sleeping on the sofa to avoid disturbing everyone in the house, which means the kind of discomfort you'd imagine. Also: a ridiculous amount of nosebleeds. Joyous.

This, however, has not noticeably stopped me from becoming more active again.  For a start, it's not in my lungs, as far as I can tell, so my breathing itself is okay. And once I get past a certain point in any exercise event, all the nice neurochemicals kick in and open up my respiratory tract, reducing inflammation and phlegm, and I have this wonderful phase for a brief period afterwards where I just don't cough. :)

The next post will deal with what I've been doing, exercise-wise. :)

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...

Back in the Habit (Slowly)

It's quite remarkable how many good habits I've dropped lately. From the aforementioned gym-slacking and taxi-taking to sleep patterns, fluid intake, and sugar consumption, it's all gone a bit to pot.

Annoying.

However, not insurmountable.  So this week I will be:

1. Resurrecting the Spreadsheet. Harder to say "Oh, I'm fine..." if the graphs say "Er, not really..."

2. Setting myself some short-, medium-, and long-term goals again.

3. Starting blogging about all this again (I suspect this lost out to the "writing a new poem a day for every day of April" thing I've been doing (with running-mates this year)...)

4. Starting thinking about teaming up with others who have similar goals.  (i.e. people who aren't super-fit but who like walking/ are happy to job gently beside my fast walking pace; want to cycle at all/ more/ further/ faster; want to use my gym at the same time as I do, etc.)

5. Celebrating the small victories again.

6. Starting to look out for a physio who likes talking about weights, press-ups, etc.

7. Having a look through this book what I bought, to see if that's any cop (got to sort this bloody neck/ shoulder thing out).


So yeah - see above; you'll be hearing more from me on this.

Right. As you were...

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.