On the Mend

Over the last four and a bit weeks the back has gotten significantly better. I would say too little too late retrospectively and in regard to the incidents of the last four weeks, however, that would be at best humbug and at worst wishing ill on yourself.

When I left my previous home of seven years on the 8^th of September 2021, I was still having serious problems day to day, week to week. Now things have settled to a newish normal that I shall attempt to describe.

My stride length has shortened, my pace has slowed, and my leg left is `unreliable’ on uneven ground, but the hot-lumbar pain, the burning sensation of permanent stinging nettles running from thigh to calf has faded to a constant `sensation’ (I can’t describe it as anything else, it no longer burns, but it is constantly present). I still have peripheral neuropathy along the entire length of my left leg and in various places around the midriff, front and rear. Peripheral neuropathy manifests as constant involuntary motion of muscles. My son Charlie says it looks like something is trying to claw its way out of my leg. It’s a good description.

I have wracked my brain wondering about the change, the positive progress in the last four weeks that has eluded me for the previous eight and a half months or more. And I think it’s a combination of factors. Chief of which is the fact that all the structure and routine of my life has been removed. Or put another way … I haven’t had anything to do apart from write letters and emails to try and resolve matters.

I looked back at what I have actually been doing day to day in the previous months and realise with 20/20 hindsight that I haven’t stopped pushing. I spent months feeling useless, lost, and hopeless. Worried sick that my lack of productivity and the loss of income would have a detrimental effect on my relationship … well at least I guessed that right. To counter this fear of the future, fear of the unknown and concern that I wasn’t pulling my weight, I did something that now looks idiotic in retrospect … I didn’t rest. I didn’t give myself recovery time. Every time I thought I was nearly mended I did something that fired up the problem again. I can see now that my routine of waking at 05.30, doing jobs and loosening up, swimming three times a week, and then spending the days up and down like a fiddler’s elbow trying to fill the hours with domestic make-work has just meant I haven’t allowed myself to do the final bit of healing.

There is a little more to it than the above. I need to point out that this is guesswork, and it might just be coincidental, and that after eight and a half months, things have just gotten better on their own.

However, I have been walking my daughter in laws dog. The first time almost a month ago, I could walk around a single field I reckon two-hundred metres on a side, up an incline on two sides. The day following, I was not in great shape, and regretting taking on the job. However, it seemed like the least I could do, given that Charlie and Lauren have provided home comforts and a place to park the camper, without having to up-sticks and move two-hundred miles to Essex to stay with family or friends. The consequence of which may result in me losing my foothold in the county and place I have adopted as home and love.

At the same time, I pushed my swimming up from four-hundred metres to a thousand metres. I had reduced what I was doing when I returned to swimming after lockdown because I was trying to recover. But after eight months I wondered, if pushing back up would aggravate things, or do nothing to the back? It was an easy test. Do a bigger swim or two, see how things fall out. Obviously, everything went fine, my breathing improved, my stamina improved, and the only very obvious side effect has been cramps (mostly in the calves, but also upper inner thigh). It needs to be said that cramp is a symptom of an overworked muscle. Peripheral Neuropathy is a from of muscular work, entirely involuntary but work all the same. I added breaks into the swims and started doing sets of lengths, rather than just doing a single long swim, coupled with stretches in between, to manage out the spasms that bring on cramp. I have only had to get out the water early once because things were getting silly, and I was risking a massive inner upper thigh spasm. This particular form of cramp is the worst. You can’t straighten your leg, and if you get the movement wrong you just cramp elsewhere, you also can’t bend your leg for the same reason. This particular variety of cramp will leave you limping for days it is that severe.

Back to the dog walking, I varied my route around the fields. They had been ploughed but the margins were intact for the most part. I found a longer route that went uphill but at a very gentle rate over fairly even ground from the bottom of the field. This allowed (I think) a proper warm-up. I did the same thing for a couple days, and overcame to embarrassment of stopping, stretching bending and generally looking odd doing weird Callanetics, leaning on posts, trees, and gates. I did feel a fool, after all I was walking a dog, lots of people walk dogs around these arable fields, none of them look like they are limbering up for track and field.

The things that have been removed from my life, include doing all the housework, odds and ends (really small odds and sods of gardening), house-plant care, doing the dishes, emptying the dishwasher, putting on the washing machine et etc etc. These things I started at 05.30 in the morning and carried on doing quite often until 7pm or 8pm in the evening. Things I felt I had to do, to make up for the lost income, and the amount of time I was spending at home coupled with the underlying stress of not getting better but feeling under constant pressure to do `something to make amends’, are probably the reason why for eight-and-a-half months; I’ve taken two steps forward and one step back. I feel such a fool. I’ve been so focused on trying to force myself back to fitness, that I haven’t taken the time to allow the body to knit together whatever it is that has needed knitting since January.

In mitigation, I would point out that I still haven’t actually found out what I did to myself with some diagnostic imaging. I have without guidance from the medical profession (other than take naproxen like Smarties) just blindly butted heads with the injury and tried to beat it into submission.

It seems one never learns. It also seems that the key to recovering the last mile was rest. Having a single walk and a lot of sit-down time, and not trying to do everything all the time because you are paranoid that your partner is slowly sickening of your miserable, malingering carcass … Oh hang on?

My life has literally been stripped back to get up get dressed, write, look for jobs, write letters and emails, and walk a dog for between forty minutes and an hour a day. And of course, on three days a week swim a thousand metres front and back crawl.

I can say this without fear of repute. I’m not a 100%. One day the dog was surprised by another dog as we came around a blind corner. She isn’t good with other dogs, and I wasn’t ready. She almost had me over, and in doing so wrenched my lumbar good and proper. We didn’t go out the next day, and I was back on the anti-inflammatories for two days. A few days after this, I found a hole under some straw around a field margin, after the farmer had tilled the ploughed field to a finer tilth. The self-righting nervous mechanism that lets you know where you are relative to the ground, doesn’t work well on the left side. I did an aeroplane impression briefly, while trying to regain my balance. I spent the next two days only walking on made roads rather than fields, two days of Naproxen, and a week of neck that won’t turn left. It has to be said I haven’t swum for a week, I picked up bug and did a lot of sneezing and coughing for a few days. Coughing and sneezing are the enemy. But and it is a big BUT, on balance things seem to be heading in the right direction … a little late for my relationship, but on a personal level, there is light at the end of the tunnel.

The plan going forward (such as it is) is to maintain the current momentum, find a job and start re-building the rest of my life. Getting back to meaningful work, finding a home, and finding a way back to some semblance of normality.