It’s been a while since I last wrote a blog post. It seems to have been about two years. Man, it’s been a long two years with lots of happenings!
I had hip pain in March 2022. Physio started in June when the pain didn’t go away. I started to lose the use of my right leg around November and by December I was disabled, restricted to the ground floor of the house, and couldn’t take 3 steps with the crutches without screaming in extreme pain.
The doctors took a few attempts to get the pain medication right. Ultimately, I was on a highly potent cocktail of 29 tablets a day consisting of all the oxys you can think of, the codeines, various nerve-pain analgesics and of course the good ole paracetamol which seems to be the bedrock of pain relief medication.
Of course all this was just pain management. These 29 tablets a day did nothing to solve the problem, which was my spine. I didn’t even know I had a spine problem, I thought it was my hip until the end of the year.
This was logical, right? I had done sports since I was 5. I had played tennis and squash for my university and started running (for pleasure) in high school. I stopped counting the number of half marathons I’d completed when those became mid-length runs as I trained for 4 marathons over 5 or 6 years. In March 2022 my hip had started hurting after a few training sessions, so the physio was supposed to help. Who knew that it would be a spinal problem and not anything to do with my legs themselves? Meh.
Well, maybe my ballet instructor knew. I had to stop ballet after nearly 10 years of training because, according to the principal of the dance school, my back was weak possibly because I was getting quite tall. I keep thinking back to her seemingly superficial observation. Did she actually have a hunch that there was a weakness in my back? Fast forward a few decades and here it seems a few of us have back problems of different kinds in the family. My brother and a few cousins, have experienced back drama.
But I digress with the musings. Let’s go back to what happened after the end of 2022. No scrap that. Let’s go to Christmas day 2022. Guess who was back at the hospital then? Yep, yep.
A month later guess what happened? I was back in the hospital again, for about 3 nights this time until my pain settled.
Can you guess what happened just over a month after that? I’ll give you a hint, there’s a pattern here! Yep, I was back in hospital. All the symptoms that my right leg had developed, during its journey to uselessness, were now starting on my left leg. Joyful.
This time the trip to the hospital was a little different though. It wasn’t a case of hobbling or throwing myself at the car to be driven to hospital 30 mins away. This time the hospital limo came for me. Thankfully, the lights and siren weren’t turned on so attention on the invalid was kept to a minimum. Yay.
It seems that you have to be on track for both your legs to stop working, when the doctors know you have a spinal problem, before something other than pain management treatment is organized. Sadly, I don’t think this is a flaw of the medical care by the health professionals but rather how the administration behind the hospitals and the NHS have developed their flow chart of operational (pun alert!) policy. I can understand the reasoning behind this. Funding is not unlimited and prioritizations have to be made to an equal standard. It just sucks as a patient. Maybe I wouldn’t have lasting nerve damage now in my right foot if I had been operated on earlier.
Anyway, I am grateful. Very grateful.
They didn’t tell me at the time, but I had two spinal bulges. They fixed the one that was causing the drama. The other one, as they repeatedly tell me, is NOT a ticking time bomb in my back. It might never develop as the other one did.
Of course, at the same time, if I do too many of the prescribed physio stretches and exercises my back locks up, I’m in severe pain and I need to take some of the medication I had gleefully stopped ingesting a few weeks after my operation. So while it feels like a ticking time bomb in my back, it ISN’T!
It isn’t! It isn’t!
But something magical happened to me during this time. Random people have popped up to say hi because something reminded them of me, or I came up in conversation, or something or the other.
Isn’t that just pure magic? It is to me.
I don’t think I’m overthinking things when I say that it’s one of the nicest gifts the universe gives. I’ve done it in the past, myself. When I’ve randomly thought of someone, I’ve messaged. It is, however, more than very nice when it happens back to you. It’s heartwarming and humbling.
All these moments when lives intersect for a little while, as new friends get to know each other or when (in my case) you get a new class of students for a month or two, magic happens. People impact each other in ways that are often not noted, especially if you’re open to simply observing and appreciating their personalities. I’ve always maintained that while I may teach my students and impart actual knowledge, more often than not I’m also on the learning side by just observing their approaches to life and the differences little personality traits can make.
But this blog post is getting a bit too long, and I have more to say about the friends I’ve regained contact with (because don’t you know it already – I only know fabulous and amazing people!). But be assured, I’m back! The mental running commentary is still going at full speed…. There are things to say, and say them I will!
Oh, by the way! I’ll leave you with this snippet. Over ten years ago I was getting ready for the London to Brighton charity bike marathon. I’m not a bike person but I was determined to give it a try with a group from work. We’d meet up and have practice rides in Richmond Park. On either my first or second practice ride, I was overtaken by a group of cyclists on a variety of bikes. One guy passed me on a recumbent bike, which I thought was pretty cool. I couldn’t understand why my friends were laughing at me at the meeting point, though. Yeah, the guy that had passed me on the recumbent only had one leg. Yes, I had been cycling more slowly than a one-legged man on a bike! (Go ahead, snicker! Laugh it up!). My point with sharing that little tidbit is… Differently abled doesn’t mean unable. I’ve known this as a teacher for quite a long time. Now, I just get to know and practice it as a has-been ‘athlete’ trying to make a comeback.
