not succulent, tasty or kind...

Sad news.

It seems that bacon, ham and sausages may be in the same category of carcinogens as cigarettes, alcohol and arsenic (class 1 carcinogens).  So say the World Health Organisation, anyway.  In fact, they've essentially concluded that red meat is carcinogenic to humans full stop (class 2a carcinogen).

That sounds bad, but they've also said that breathing air is a class 1 carcinogen, so it's difficult to know what exactly we're supposed to do with these conclusions.  It's not as though all that many people are on a 40 sausage-a-day habit, so a direct comparison with smoking also seems a little unfair.

I'm reminded of an article Jeremy Paxman wrote a few years ago where he had been reading the National Dictionary of Biography, and observed that people don't just die in their sleep or of old age any more.  You might be 199 years old, but when you die, we will be able to observe exactly what it was that finally pushed you over the edge.

These observations on what causes these cancers seems to me to fall into the same kind of category; processed meat may well cause cancer, but it's probably been killing us as a species for thousands of years and we've only now been able to determine exactly how.

This is all fairly timely for me.  I had a scan the other day that revealed some abnormalities in my bowel that need to be removed.  They're probably not cancerous, but over the course of the next ten years or so, they're reasonably likely to become cancerous, so they've got to come out.  It's an amazing thing that we can find this out now and do something about it, but it's not very difficult to imagine how, in another time and place, this could easily have gone completely undetected and perhaps carried me off in my seventies.  That's how people used to die, isn't it? At the end of it all, something has to kill you, after all.

When I was having the scan a few weeks ago, I was chatting to the guy supervising the process:
"So, what causes these abnormalities?"
"Well, we can't really say for certain, but it seems likely that they can be caused by eating processed meats like bacon and by drinking beer...."  At this point, I think he must have seen the look on my face as my world was pulled out from under my feet and I contemplated a world without bacon and beer. "....but then again, teetotal vegetarians get them too, so who really knows?"

Who indeed.

I'm so lazy I almost stop....

When my alarm went off this morning at a little after 6am, I wasn’t keen on moving in the slightest. This wasn’t especially surprising in the sense that I wouldn’t normally spring out of bed with great excitement on any day, but today just seemed especially uninviting: cold, dark and damp. Still, as I like to flog myself and because I was getting up so early to go out on a run, I dragged my sorry arse out of bed and got changed into my running gear. After all, I can’t punish myself much if I stay in bed for a lie-in, can I? As always, getting out of bed was the hardest part, and the run itself was pretty good. With fourteen other likeminded souls, I was treated to an up-close view of a cold, clear night turning into a beautifully clear dawn, finishing just as the sun was rising. I even ran pretty hard, I think, pushing myself on the way home when I imagined that the guy behind me was trying to draft in my slipstream, and put on a spurt of pace to try and shake him off over the last mile. It worked and I came home in first place in a race that nobody but me cared about.

It’s a good way to start the day – I just wouldn’t want to do it every day. In spite of my determination to exercise, I’m actually pretty lazy.

Normally I would cycle to the gym for the run and then cycle from the gym to work, but today was different. Today, I was in the car because my first appointment of the day – after the run – was for an hour’s physiotherapy at the hospital. I’d been referred by the specialist to see if anything could be done to mobilise the stiffening ankle joint that is giving me problems and causing the knock-on injuries when I run that plagued me through 2013. The stiffness and loss of dorsiflexion are probably caused by underlying neurological issues – i.e. my MS – but both are mechanical symptoms that I might be able to work on to prolong my overall mobility.

the sweet science of physiotherapy

I assumed that this would mean sixty minutes of fairly painful manipulation by the physio, but actually this turned out to be a prolonged investigation to try to understand where I’m breaking down. It seems that, as well as the stiff ankle and a decline in my ability to flex my left foot at the ankle upwards, I have got some stiffness and loss of mobility in my right hip too. The physio thought that this might be in part due to the loss of muscle strength in the left side of my body, but before she gave me a whole load of strength exercises to do, she gave me some simpler ones to see if simply working to mobilise these joints might help.

The last physio I saw a few months ago gave me a pile of exercises to strengthen the leg around my troublesome ITB… but like everyone else in the history of physiotherapy, I stopped doing them as soon as my ITB stopped hurting. As I mentioned above, in spite of all appearances to the contrary (obsessive exercising, blah blah blah), I am a fundamentally lazy man and reluctant to commit to anything as bothersome as regular stretching exercises – I almost never warm up before I go running, for starters…. But this time it feels a bit different: if I want to keep running, I need to make sure my body doesn’t seize up any more than it already has. To do that, I should probably concede that I may need to actually do these exercises.

Besides, I’ve got another appointment in a few weeks time and, although she seemed nice enough, I think my physiotherapist could be quite a force of nature if disappointed with my progress. I’ve had a physio stick a big needle into the sole of my foot before, and he didn’t even seem angry. These people are not to be treated lightly.

just keep moving...

I had an appointment with the Sports Injury Clinic at QMC this afternoon, and I left work early fully expecting to have a large needle shoved painfully into the bottom of my foot for my troubles.  My plantar fascia has flared up again.  When this happened last year, I ended up lying on the bed in my local surgery with my doctor poised over my foot with a syringe with a very heavy gauge needle.
"I'm afraid that this is going to hurt", he said, a touch sorrowfully.  It bloody did too, although it did make 85% of the pain go away for about a year, so.... probably just about worth it, on balance.

I've had a pretty miserable eighteen months with injuries: plantar fascia, illiotibial band, hips, knees, cracked ribs..... everything seems to be breaking down.  The cracked rib apart - and we're still not talking about that and it still bloody hurts - those are all injuries that can be traced back to my running.  I'm nearly forty now, and I've got a few miles on the clock accumulated through more than twenty years of pulling on my trainers and heading outside for a run.  I used to loathe running at school and only did so reluctantly, and I let exercise of most sorts slide when I was at university, but since about 1998, I've been running on a regular basis.

I'm proud to say that, although I'm getting older, I think my annual mileage has been increasing with every passing year.  With all the strain that puts on my body (my osteopath once told me that I didn't exactly have the optimum build for a runner). I suppose that a few aches and pains are only to be expected.

The difficult thing for me to cope with is that my biomechanical failures are ultimately likely caused by my MS: a weakness in the left side of my body is causing me to lose flexibility in my ankle, to drop my leg, scuff my foot and generally cause havoc.  At the clinic today, the consultant decided not to give me an injection into my foot because, as he explained to the observing medical student in the room, that would be addressing the symptom and not the cause: the problems in my foot and my other mechanical problems are being caused by other failures, and an injection would only mask those problems rather than solve them.

The good news is that the consultant seems to understand my compulsion to exercise.  We spoke about this when I saw him in May.  He's a runner himself, and he'd just had back surgery, and he couldn't wait to get back out onto the roads and explained how he was trying to work out if the pain he was feeling would get better or worse if he went running.  Most sane people - especially a doctor - might think that the pain is a pretty good indication to stay at home; a runner is busy trying to work out if he can use it to justify a nice, gentle 3 miler.  He knows I have multiple sclerosis, and he knows that there may be underlying neurological issues that he can't do anything about.  He's not worried about that.  His primary concern is to address the mechanical issues that are causing me problems and to keep me on the road.  From my point of view, this is excellent news.  He's referring me to have some detailed physiotherapy at the hospital to see if they can address the problems with the loss of flexibility in my ankle and to try and stop the foot scuffing.  It's perhaps not the quick fix I might have wanted (even if it involved a big needle), but we're playing the long game here.

Before I left the consultation, I turned to the two doctors:
"You do realise that I'm using this session as an excuse not to take any exercise today"
Quick as a flash, the consultant replied, "Oh really?  You're not even going to try and fit in a quick bike ride?"

You see: he gets it.

After deciding not to go back to the office, I got home reasonably early for once, and I've been fighting the compulsion to get my kit together and to go to running club for tonight's 5 miler.  I'm cycling to work tomorrow and going for a run at lunchtime.  I find it so, so difficult to do nothing.....  I like to think that this determination and sheer will to exercise no matter what is a good thing, but I suppose it can be a weakness too.  Sometimes you need to know when to stop.

With that said, I think I'm going to resist the temptation to run tonight and will succumb to the temptation to eat fish and chips instead.

---

Related to this, Runkeeper posted a link to this on Facebook the other day and it really strikes a chord.  10 Lessons that Running Teaches You About Life.

If you ask me, there's a lot to be learned here about much more than just running...... A lot of my attitude towards my multiple sclerosis is articulated here.
1, 5 and 7 especially.  Keep going, no matter what.  Never let your setbacks win.  You define your own limits.... sorry if I sound like a shitty motivational poster, and I despise this stuff when someone tries to apply it to our shitty, trivial jobs.  But this is your life and you only get one of those. You just have to believe it, bro.

1. When things get tough, just keep going.
When most people encounter a rough patch, they quit. The truly successful people in the world keep going no matter what. Never let your setbacks win.

2. Consistency creates habit.
To incorporate anything into your life, you have to make it a habit. To make something a habit, you have to be consistent. Whatever it is you’re aiming for, make it a part of your life.

3. You’ll have to get through hell before you get to heaven.
Like all things worth pursuing, you are going to get knocked down, stepped on, and rejected along the way. Consider this to be part of the path to your goals. Sometimes it’s more about the journey than the destination.

4. Reaching your goals will take a lot of work.
If it doesn’t, it’s either not a goal, not worth pursuing, or will not have any fulfillment. Never expect to not put in work and get somewhere.

5. Every aspect of life is mental.
It’s not about what you do or what happens to you, it’s about how to respond to it. It’s how you decide to carry on. Your power comes from inside your head.

6. You do have time– you just have to make it.
If something is important to you, you’ll make time for it. If not, you’ll make excuses.

7. You define your own limits.
Your limits aren’t put unto you by your parents, other people, or the universe. You are in total control of it. You decide whether or not to shoot for the moon or stay right where you are.

8. If you wait for the right conditions, you’ll never get anything done.
Don’t wait for anything or anybody. You know what you have to do to reach your goals and get things done. Just go do them!

9. Go beyond your limits every day and watch the magic happen.
You’ll be amazed at what you can achieve if you just push yourself a little further.

10. There is peace even in the most chaotic times.
No matter now gruelling, stressful, sorrowful, or painful your situation is, there is always a silver lining and something positive to be found. Seek it out, learn from it, and keep moving on.

broken heroes on a last chance power drive....

Is it a good thing or a bad thing when a medical professional tells you that you’re a fascinating case? The two physios I’ve seen over the last six months were both fascinated by my calf muscles. They see calf muscles all day every day, right? It was slightly unnerving that they were especially interested in mine. I saw the sports injury consultant today. His first question to me when I walked through the door and we’d exchanged pleasantries was,
“So, what’s your sport?”

This threw me somewhat, as I see myself as a hobbyist at best. I dabble with running, swimming and cycling, but I’m hardly Mo Farah, Michael Phelps or Sir Chris Hoy, am I?

I’ve been having mechanical problems, as I keep telling everyone, and I discussed these with the specialist, although he was equally as interested in my multiple sclerosis, when it started, how it first presented itself and how it affected me now.

The long and the short of it is that he wants me to keep running and is keen to get me back on the road as soon as possible. Within 15 minutes of meeting me, he’d already gauged that running was vitally important to both my physiological and psychological sense of wellbeing and he was adamant that this should continue for as long as possible. He’s right, of course. Running is important to me; it’s when I’m running that I feel as though I’m free. It’s painful and it’s hard and it’s often a slog, but it brings on a sense of good, honest fatigue… not the creeping lassitude you get from MS. I swim and I cycle, but neither of them have quite the same effect on me as running. Running just feels purer somehow.

I drop my left foot when I run. I have a lack of dorsiflexion in my left ankle. My left thigh is noticeably less well developed than the equivalent muscle on the right (not that I’ve ever noticed before today - I guess that explains why that new pair of skinny jeans felt like it had one leg tighter than the other.  It wasn't the jeans cut weirdly after all - it was me). These things are all likely to be caused by neurological issues and are causing me to run differently as I get tired and this in turn is causing mechanical problems in my feet, calves, knees and groin. Cumulatively, these problems are adding up and are really affecting my ability to run and taking a physical toll on my body.

When I feel fatigued, it can sometimes be hard to get out of the door to go for a run, but I always make myself do it. Always. For the first time in my life, I’m worried that this iron will might actually be causing me to hurt myself. I can push through fatigue, but if the fatigue is causing my body to break, then maybe I should stop?

Nonsense, says the specialist. I may have to cut my miles back and start to do more cycling and more swimming, but he’s damned if he’s going to let my neurology stop me from running altogether. We can work on the flexibility of my ankle and the strength of my glutes to support my knee as I run. He’s seen 39 year olds without MS in worse physical condition than me, and with the miles on the clock really starting to add up, some kind of wear and tear is inevitable.

More stretching. More physio. More running. Adapt, adjust and keep running.

So, in summary: fuck you, multiple sclerosis. This show is still on the road.

won't listen....

I'm a stubborn, silly man.

For the last seven or eight days, I have been so stuffed up with cold that even I have been forced to accept that going out for a run was a stupid idea.  I'm now broadly on the mend, although the dregs of what remains of the cold appears to have descended into my lungs, giving me one of those annoying, hacking coughs.  We're leaving for Canada on Saturday, and the most important thing was that I was feeling well enough for it not to ruin the holiday.  Rest.  Rest would be sensible.  Play the long game.

So I went for a 5.30 mile run in the freezing cold air with running club.  Wearing a dressing-gown*.

Kill or cure, I reckoned.

Well, my lungs felt okay during the run, which was good, but with about a mile to go my knee really started to hurt.  You know, the knee I'm supposed to be resting so it doesn't ruin my skiing holiday.  This morning it was all stiff and sore.

Idiot.  Idiot.  Idiot.

Luckily, I had a physio appointment scheduled tonight anyway, and I think it's going to be fine...although I might need another steroid jab or to see a specialist.... Still.  For now, I think I got away lightly.

Lesson learned.  I really need to know when to stop.

....So after physio, and in spite of the fact that I'd be coughing more or less constantly since I finished running, I went for a swim.  After 20 lengths, I realised that I was wheezing and thought I'd probably better stop.

Hmm.  Some people just don't learn, eh?  Oh, and I've also given my cold to my wife.  Ooops.

Still.  Nearly there!

* It was comic relief night at running club, and we were all out in our PJs, onesies and dressing gowns. And no, I wasn't about to go running in my new onesie... in spite of popular demand.  Word, it seems, is out....

somebody put me together....

Ever heard of an iliotibial band?

Nah. Me neither. Well, until about 0730 this morning anyway.

Yes. You’ve guessed it: I'm injured again. You might remember that I was moaning about a minor case of knee ouch a few months ago, but that moaning was soon superseded by much more whining about calf ouch and tendon-under-the-foot ouch. Well, it seems the knee ouch is back with a vengeance.

So what is the iliotibial band, I hear you cry. Is it a muscle?

Well, thanks for asking. As it happens, the IT band is not a muscle. It is a thick band of tissue called fascia that starts on the outside of the hip, passes down the outside of the thigh and inserts into the side of the patella (knee cap) and the tibia, (shin bone). It helps to stabilise the knee joint. Fascia is a sheath-like tissue that surrounds muscles. The ITB has the tensile strength of soft steel, which explains why it is so difficult to mobilize. As well as arising from the iliac crest, (hip bone) the ITB attaches into the gluteal muscles at the back and tensor facia lata muscle at the front. When these muscles contract, they increase tension on the band. Often, one muscle dominates the movement pattern causing an imbalance to occur, which may lead to injury.

Well, it may have the tensile strength of steel, but apparently I've still knackered mine. The one in my left leg anyway.

Why does it hurt? Well, I’m glad you asked that too.

It hurts because, as the knee bends, tension acting on the band, causes it to be pulled backwards over the lateral femoral epicondyle, (a bony prominence of the thigh bone on the outside of the knee). When the knee straightens, tension on the band pulls it forward again. A thin bursa, or fluid filled sac, separates the ITB from the femoral epicondyle, to decrease friction between these structures. Repetitive bending and straightening of the knee can cause inflammation of the bursa and the band itself, or irritation of the bone due to recurrent rubbing or impingement. For me, weekly mileage interacted with a combination of biomechanical issues, training strategies, and the variables imposed by my own particular specific muscle imbalances; once a critical threshold is met, tissue breakdown occurs and you have knee ouch. It is not necessary to sustain a specific traumatic injury to the knee for the ITB to become a problem.

A recap: one of the things caused by my MS is a weakening of the left-hand side of my body. When I get tired, I seem to “drop” a leg. As I do a fair bit of running, this seems to be causing mechanical issues in that side of my body: cramps in my calves; micro-tears in the cartilage of the knee; plantar fasciitis. Now, apparently, it’s affecting my ITB. Why now? Well, the day after we got back from holiday, I went on an 8.5 mile run. After about 5.5. miles, I could feel that my left leg had “dropped”. Clearly, I was still 3.5 miles from home, so I had little choice but to carry on, adjusting my running style so that I was “carrying” the dropped leg. It didn’t feel too bad at the time, but I could feel a twinge in my knee on my next couple of (shorter) runs. I’ve learned to ignore the messages coming from my body, so I just kept going. I went on an 8 mile run this Sunday, and although it didn’t hurt whilst I was running, when I stopped, my whole knee stiffened up immediately, and I’ve been hobbling around ever since.

As I’m going skiing in 4 weeks, I was quite keen to understand what was wrong and what could be done about it. At the physio this morning, Carly confirmed that she didn’t think it was an issue with my cartilage (good – that might have required surgery) but that instead I was going to need to do some laborious stretching and rolling of my IBT to get myself back into shape. This is a sports physio clinic, so Carly has worked with plenty of runners before. She made me promise – promise – that I wouldn’t go out running before she sees me again on Friday afternoon. If I’ve been a good boy and I’ve been doing my exercises, then she might – might – allow me to go running at the weekend. Swimming is okay, but ABSOLUTELY NO RUNNING.

If I am allowed to run as a special treat at the weekend, perhaps I should avoid doing an 8-miler, eh?

Curse this weak, fallible, fragile human vessel of mine. I’m determined not to let fatigue or pins & needles or numbness stop me from running, but it seems that MS has been rather more devious than that and has devised a fiendish route to a general mechanical breakdown instead. I guess I’ll just have to swim obsessively for the next few days instead…..

Grr.

taste the pain....

Phrases you never want to hear from a doctor, especially when he’s standing poised over the sole of your foot holding a heavy-gauge needle that is fully two inches long:

“I’m afraid this is going to hurt”

It did.

He pushed the needle straight into the side of my foot to access the sore spot on my tendon. That hurt. He pressed down on the plunger to push the steroid into my foot. That really hurt. It brought tears to my eyes, but I’m a brave little soldier and I barely let out a peep. You would have been proud of me.

Now, I'm not scared of needles: after all, I inject myself every week; I've had a needle pushed through the iris of my eye whilst I was full conscious - I've never had a better incentive to keep still.  But this.... this stung.

The doctor kept on casually chatting as he worked.  “There’s local anaesthetic mixed in with the steroid, which should help in the short term too. It will probably take a couple of days for the steroid to take effect.”

As it’s the whole pushing-the-needle-in bit of the procedure that hurt, I was a bit mystified by the purpose of the local anaesthetic after that bit had already been done and surely the worst was over…. But a couple of hours later, when it wore off, I realised why they put it in.

Ouch.

Some people say that pain is just weakness leaving the body.  Those people are clearly IDIOTS.

I really hope this works. Apparently there are three possible outcomes: total fix, temporary fix for a few months or no effect at all.  Fingers crossed, eh.  It is a touch sore at the moment, mind.  I'm sure that will pass in time.

All things must pass.

Hold me.

rubber band....

The plantar fascia is the thick, fibrous connective tissue on the sole of the foot. It originates on the bottom surface of the heel bone and extends along the sole of the foot towards the toes. As my dad - a doctor - keeps telling me, it's not a tendon: it's a fascia - as if that particular piece of medical pedantry makes me feel any better.

For the first 38 years of my life, I can't say that I have given this particular part of my body a great deal of thought. It's just sort of there, isn't it? Why would you think about it all that much? Oh, how quickly things can change. Now I think about it a lot: mostly when I first wake up in the morning and get out of bed, but also with every step that I take when I go out running. I may not have known much about it before, and I suppose I don't really know all that much about it now, but what I do know about it, is that when it become inflamed - as it has been in my left foot for the last six months - it is both very painful and extremely hard to shift.

As Dr Wiki tells me, the pain is usually felt on the underside of the heel and is often most intense with the first steps of the day... for me it feels a little bit like walking on the blade of a knife.  I'm not that steady on my feet in the mornings anyway, but this definitely hasn't helped. Apparently another symptom is that the sufferer has difficulty bending the foot so that the toes are brought toward the shin (decreased dorsiflexion of the ankle). A symptom commonly recognized among sufferers of plantar fasciitis is an increased probability of knee pains, especially among runners.

Check and check.

I have a stiff left knee, sore calves and reduced mobility in my left ankle.  I scuff my left foot a little when I run, which I've been putting down to MS fatigue causing me to 'drop' that leg a little (a fairly common symptom).  I've assumed that it's this scuffing that has been causing the wear and tear on that side of my body.  Perhaps it is, but a bio-mechanical assessment also told me that I have very high arches in my feet, and that when I run, these collapse a little, resulting in my left leg being about 2cm longer than my right leg.  Well, that goes a pretty long way to explaining the scuffing, anyway.  I've been wearing insoles in my shoes to try and correct this since August time, and I think it's helping to some extent, but it seems that the damage to my plantar fascia is done and won't clear up that easily.

I've tried icing it, rolling it, stretching it, wearing a night splint to stretch it out.  I've even tried having acupuncture needles stuck into it and used to stimulate it.  Yeah, that was every bit as unpleasant as it sounds.  Nothing seems to make any difference.  I haven't stopped running, obviously... although actually the act of running stretches it out and temporarily eases the pain.  A bit.

A guy at the gym saw me massaging the sole of my foot in the sauna and started up a conversation on the subject.  Apparently he suffered really badly, but there's this thing you can get (on the NHS) at Queens Hospital in Nottingham where they take blood from your arm and inject the plasma into your foot, and it's like a miracle cure.  I had been resigned to toughing this out until it went away, but this conversation actually inspired me to get my arse down to the doctor to see if we could do anything.  The plasma thing remains my plan b, but on Thursday morning, I'm going to have a steroid injection into the sole of my foot at my local doctor's surgery to see if that helps.

Apparently the injection can be very painful, but this has been so annoying that I'm prepared to give it a go.  I'm tired of limping around the place and I'm not going to take it any more!

I know I whine a lot on here about my MS.... so I suppose, in way, it's nice to be able to moan about something mechanical which (probably) has nothing at all to do with my chronic neurological condition and is instead simply about the fact that I'm not getting any younger and I'm putting a lot of miles on the clock.  I'm 6 foot 5 inches tall and weigh the best part of 85kg.  That's an awful lot of force to be throwing through my body when I go running... I suppose it was always going to be a matter of time before I broke something.

I'll not be stopping running, clearly.  I'm not dead yet.

droplets of yes and no in an ocean of maybe....

It's the Robin Hood half marathon this Sunday.  The bulk of the training is now done and I've just got one gentle two-miler tomorrow between me and the race.  Of course, I'm doing my best - as always - to sabotage myself: my taper began on Monday with a "gentle" 4-miler where I managed to twist my ankle.  It seems to be alright, but I was a little worried for a minute there.  Meanwhile, the tendon in my left foot has now stiffened up so much that I've literally been hobbling around everywhere, especially in the mornings.  I'm not actually too worried about this, as the act of running stretches the tendon out and the pain eases off after the first mile or so.  And I'll be taking a shit-pile of drugs before I run, too.  Worse yet, in spite of not exercising for a couple of days, I woke up tired this morning and have felt the gradual, insidious creep of MS fatigue across my shoulders and arms all day.  Experience tells me that I'll probably have shaken this off by the weekend, but the prospect of 13.1 miles is really starting to loom in front of me.

Still, the race itself is only the final piece of a larger and more satisfying challenge.

In the last three months, since the beginning of July, I have run the grand total of 194.24 miles (in 36 separate activities, so that's about 5.4 miles each time, on average).    Before that, I was stuck in a bit of rut, running 3.25 miles twice a week at lunchtime from work, and one other run of about 4.25 miles on a Saturday morning.   I was running the same routes all the time at more or less the same pace.  I was cruising and wasn't pushing myself hard enough.  I joined running club at around about the beginning of July, and since then I have definitely been encouraged to run further and faster than I would have done on my own.  I haven't followed a specific half-marathon training programme this year - and indeed, I didn't even admit to myself that I was going to run one at all until a couple of weeks ago - but I'm pretty sure that I've worked harder than I did last year when I thought I trained pretty hard.  Whether or not this will show in my time on Sunday remains to be seen.

I'm trying hard to pretend that I don't have a target time in mind, and I'll just see how I feel (and more importantly, how the tendon in my foot feels) on the day.  The reality is that if I don't break 2 hours, I'll probably be a little bit disappointed.  Well, the weather might be horrible anyway, so who knows.

I'll find out soon enough, right?

Given that I wasn't planning to run at all, and I only set up the JustGiving page a few weeks ago, I'm really pleased that I've raised £619 for Macmillan so far, with a further £140 promised, £152 in Gift Aid and another £500 from my company as part of their fund matching scheme.  That's going to pull in a grand total of around £1500, and that makes it all feel really worthwhile.

Just to put that into context:

• £100 could mean that the Macmillan support line would be able to help people affected by cancer to claim £2,691 in benefits they're entitled to
• £156 could run the Macmillan support line for an hour, providing an average of 13 people with essential information and support
• £350 could pay for a convalescent break for someone with cancer and their carer
• £918 could fund a Macmillan nurse for a working week

It's a great charity and you can still sponsor me here.  Thank you so much to everyone who has already contributed.  As always, you floor me with your generosity.

One little run to go before race day.  Given that it was on this run last year that I managed to strain a muscle in my buttock, I will definitely be trying to take things easy this year.....

After all, I'm a thoroughbred athlete.

Mmmm.  Monster Munch.

but she's too rough and I'm too delicate....

I'm pretty sure that, when I was a younger man, I didn't have conversations with sales assistants.

Well, OK.... I did have conversations with sales assistants.  On my better days and if conditions were absolutely perfect.  I just didn't have conversations with sales assistants where we compared notes about our various ailments and our complicated strategies for managing them.

It turns out that Claire suffers from plantar fasciitis too, and she was very impressed that I was disciplined enough to follow a strict stretching and icing routine. Well, I said. It hurts less when I do these things, so I'll do them until it stops hurting. At which point, of course, I'll stop doing them immediately. She told me about the homemade sock she'd made with elastic on the toe to stretch her tendon out, but that it was an unsatisfactory arrangement. I was able to wholeheartedly recommend the strassburg sock as a relatively inexpensive way of managing this and reducing your early morning pain. Available on Amazon, ladies and gentlemen. You could have one of your very own by teatime tomorrow if you order in the next 14 minutes.

Yes, so it was a running shop, and it was just after a hill interval training session with running club... but still, talking about how you ice your tendons, roll your calves and wear an attractive remedial sock in bed are not exactly the conversational gambits of a 20 year old, are they?

I am so old and broken.

You can sponsor me here though, eh folks.....

the denial twist....

At what point does determination become stubbornness become stupidity?

I run for all sorts of reasons, many of which I've gone into before and don't propose to go into again now.  You know the drill though: the long and the short of it is that it makes me feel better about myself.  It's also, rather obviously become something of a compulsion for me:  if I don't go running, I feel worse about myself.  It's my own personal two fingers to my MS.  If I can still do this, you haven't beaten me yet.

I used to just put my trainers on and go, but recently my running routine has become a whole lot more complicated.  Before I go, I roll my calves with a big foam roller to ease out accumulated stiffness.  It hurts, so I count it out: 20 full rolls, backwards and forwards on the left leg (the more painful of the two), then 20 full rolls, backwards and forwards on my right.  For good measure, I'll probably do another 10 or so rolls on my left leg.  I'll then get out a little wooden ball and roll the tendon underneath my left foot for about 5 minutes to ease the tension in my plantar fascia tendon.  I'll also probably take some ibuprofen before doing some more general stretching of my legs.  I don't have very good balance any more, particularly on my left-hand side, something that a lot of warmup exercises bring painfully to my attention as I stand on one leg to roll my ankles.  Still, needs must, I suppose.

Then I run.

The tendon underneath my left foot hurts for the first half mile or so, then it loosens off as it stretches, although I tend to scuff the front of my left foot on the ground more and more as I get tired.  Sometimes my calves start to seize up, forcing a change in my running style and a spread of tension through my body as I can feel myself fighting against the effort of the run.  I've started wearing calf guards as I run, which I'm sure make me look a total nugget, but really seem to help ease the tension in my calves... and besides, they have special pockets in them, front and back, that have room to slot ice packs in when I get back.

After running, I ice my legs for twenty minutes or so, and I also apply ice to the bottom of my left foot to ease off the tendon. Once I've iced the tendon, I'll then use the little wooden ball to roll some of the tension out.  Sometimes, after icing, I can hear the tendon popping like bubble-wrap as I roll the ball under my foot.  After that, and after a shower, I will put on the Strassburg Sock that I will continue to wear all night (or as long as I can stand it) to gently stretch out the tendon overnight and to help prevent it shortening and becoming extremely painful first thing in the morning.

It's not sexy, but it seems to work.  Up to a point.

This is my routine, and I go through the whole damn process three or four times a week as I work my way through 20-25 miles.   I've seen the doctor already this week about the problems in my knee/calf/tendon, and on Friday I'll be mentioning it to my neurologist AND seeing a specialist for a bio-mechanical assessment to try and understand if there's anything inherently inefficient in my running style that can perhaps be corrected with insoles or something.

So, at what point does all this effort just become stupid?

You know me well enough to know that I'm not going to give this up without a fight, but even I have to admit that this is becoming ridiculous.  I appear to be doing all the training for the half marathon, but I can't help but notice that I haven't actually submitted my application yet.....

Maybe my body really is trying to tell me something?

get your sexy on.....

You know how I was whining the other day about how my stupid body was falling apart?  No?  Well quick recap: my knee hurts, my calves cramp and now the tendon under my left foot has flared up and I feel like I'm walking across a knife blade first thing in the morning.

The sensible thing to do would probably be to stop running.

But we all know I'm not sensible, so that's not going to happen any time soon (I hope).  In fact, I'm training for a half marathon that I haven't even been able to bring myself to formally enter yet, as if not actually entering is going to stop me already being about halfway through the training already.  As if it's a possibility that I won't be entering at some point.  Anyway.  I have counter-measures: I roll my calves on a big foam roller to ease the cramps and stiffness out of the muscles before and after exercise; I also have a wooden ball that I roll under the plantar fascia tendon of my left foot.  It hurts like hell, but apparently it helps loosen out the stiffness and shortening of the tendon that is causing the pain.  I also have a whole series of lunges and stretches that are supposed to help, not to mention the specially moulded insoles I wear in my running shoes.

I now have a new addition to my arsenal of remedies.

My bondage sock.

Actually, it's called a Strassburg Sock.  The idea is that you wear it overnight and it keeps the tendon in your foot gently stretched to prevent it contracting.... it's that contraction that causes most of the pain.  It looks ridiculous, I agree, but it seems to be helping.

I also went to the doctor today to chase a letter from my physiotherapist suggesting he refer me to see a consultant.  That was May, and naturally he's done nothing about it, so I went to see him to give him a prod to get wheels in motion.  They'd scanned the letter into my patient records but not actually done anything else about it.

*sigh*

We've got my mother-in-law staying at the moment, and as I was discussing this whole sorry saga with her, she asked what I would do if the consultant told me to stop running.  I ducked the question... and she noticed and asked me again.

Hm.

Nobody can say with any certainty what MS will do to me over time, but I've known all along that there may come a time when I'm not able to run.  I've always said, that when that time comes, I'd simply find something I could do and would get on with that without looking back.  Until then, I'd keep running as much as I can.

What else can you do?  If it happens, it happens and I'll worry about it then.

To be honest, I was thinking more that I'd lose the use of one of my legs or that I would be overcome with fatigue or something like that.  I hadn't really considered that MS might affect me more subtly, more insidiously, and that a single symptom - the slight dropping of my left leg when I get tired - could lead to mechanical problems that are slowly making it harder and harder for me to run.  Somehow, it feels all the worse that I can run through all the numbness and pins and needles and the fatigue, but that something mechanical might just stop me.

I run because I can.  When I can't, I'm really going to feel as though I've lost something.  Perhaps I'll find something else to replace it: cycling, swimming.... anything.... and I'm sure I'll adjust.... but I don't really want to think that far into the future until it actually happens.  I've learned not to plan too far ahead.  Running is getting harder, but I'm 38 years old now and it was hardly likely to be getting any easier, was it?  I can still run.  It hurts a bit, but knee problems and plantar fasciitis are hardly unusual problems amongst runners.

So, I'll roll my calves and my foot, I'll do my squats and lunges, I'll ice my tendon after exercise and I'll wear my stupid damn sock.  In short, I will not give up without a fight.  I'm a runner.  We run.

Anyway.  That sock is kinda sexy, no?  Y'all been reading "50 Shades of Grey", so I guess you ladies are all into this kind of thing now anyway, right?

dem dry bones....

It turns out that the song was right after all:

The toe bone connected to the heel bone,
The heel bone connected to the foot bone,
The foot bone connected to the leg bone,
The leg bone connected to the knee bone,
The knee bone connected to the thigh bone,
The thigh bone connected to the back bone,
The back bone connected to the neck bone,
The neck bone connected to the head bone

Well, it's right up until the point about hearing the word of the Lord, anyway.

To be fair, it is based on Ezekiel 37: 1-14, but if you're looking for that kind of stuff here, you'd probably better move right along.

Anyway.

So, a recap: my MS means that my balance isn't very good, particularly on my left side.  This means that, when I'm tired, I drop my left leg a bit and scuff my foot as I run.  Over the course of time and of around 100 running miles a month, this scuffing has started to tear the cartilage in my left knee and I now have knee ouch.  As my body tries to protect my knee as I run, I've also developed stiffness and cramping in my calves, especially my left calf.  This in turn has affected the way I run and has limited the mobility in my left ankle as my hips, knee and ankle turn away from the centre line of my body with every stride.  This has apparently put pressure on the tendon in the sole of my foot - the plantar fascia - resulting in tightness and pain.

Who knew?  It sounds so simple.

So, the smart person would probably figure out that they weren't built for running and would stop, right?  Well, as we've long established here... I'm not a smart person.  I've upped my mileage and I'm likely going to run the Robin Hood half marathon again in September.  I don't even really like running, for goodness sake.  Who does?  I like the feeling I get when I've been running.... but I definitely prefer eating pies and drinking beer to running.

What kind of a weirdo would you have to be to enjoy inflicting pain on yourself like that?  No matter how much you do it, it never really gets any easier either... not if you're doing it right.  That's why most runners are really sympathetic to beginners: we know exactly how much it hurts: we might be running further and faster, but it hurts just the same.  Maybe more.

I've said it before, I know, but I'll be damned if I'm going to let something as ridiculous as my puny, fragile body stop me from getting out and slogging my guts out until I can barely get out of bed the next morning.  It's how I know I'm still alive.  So I'll roll my calves with a foam roller, I'll ease the tension in my planta fascia by wrapping an elastic band around my ankle and using it to hold my toes up as I roll a little wooden ball underneath my foot, I'll do all the stretches and lunges that are apparently necessary to try and correct my wonky running gait.  I'll even put mildly uncomfortable but apparently very supportive inserts into all my shoes.  I'll do whatever it takes to continue inflicting pain on myself as often as I can.  If you were in my shoes, my heavily built up supportive running shoes, you'd do the same too, right?

Yeah.  Runners are freaks alright.  Lycra clad freaks, at that....  Lycra clad freaks with no sensible place to put their keys... but definitely freaks.  Well, if I'm not a freak, then I'm definitely an idiot.

Hill training tomorrow.

cry me a river...

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before, but I cried in the cinema when I went to go and watch “Cool Runnings”. I’m not especially ashamed of this fact, but I do have an explanation: it was the end of a long run of heart-wrenching films that I went to see at the cinema over a number of weeks. Schindler’s List, Philadelphia, The Remains of the Day, Shadowlands…. By the end of that lot, I think I would have cried at pretty much anything. I used to cry at the drop of a hat as a child - real tears too, not the crocodile sort - but somewhere along the line, my emotions dried up. Nothing to do with being sent to attend largely single-sex boarding schools between the ages of seven and eighteen, I’m sure…..

Perhaps it’s because I’m older, but I seem to be turning into something of a sap and my eyes seem to fill with tears pretty much at the drop of a hat, no matter how obviously my emotions are being manipulated. This is easy enough to conceal in the dark of the matinee, and I think I got away with it at the end of “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo” the other night, but harder when it’s broad daylight and we’re watching the telly.

The most recent culprit was when the Keira Knightley version of “Pride and Prejudice” was on the telly before New Year. Now, I’ve not been much of a fan of Matthew Macfadyen since his days on Spooks, a show that I loathed, but I found myself quite affected by his performance as Darcy and the way that he and Elizabeth slowly come to terms with the way they feel about each other. I can take or leave Austen, in the main, and find her relentlessly over-analysed by people trying to project readings onto her work that I just don’t think they can support, but you can’t argue with P&P (and Keira Knightley made a much better, far less smug and knowing Elizabeth than Jennifer Ehle in the celebrated BBC adaptation too).

Getting a bit of a lump in my throat watching Macfayden as Darcy was bad enough, but what really had me wiping my eyes was Donald Sutherland’s Mr. Bennett. I firmly believe that Austen’s Mr. Bennett is one of the greatest creations in literature, and Sutherland played him beautifully, particularly at the end when he realises that his Lizzy really does love that man that she apparently professed to dislike. He says at one point, with his eyes filling with tears, “We all know him to be a proud, unpleasant sort of man; but this would be nothing if you really liked him”, and that was it, I was in pieces.

This emergence of a soft, sentimental old fool is somewhat at odds with the image I like to portray of myself as a cold, logical iceman.

[ahem].

Another reason to never watch ET, anyway.

crippled and cracked....

Working instore is pretty hard on the body for someone who usually spends their days sat in meetings drinking coffee.  After three days instore last week, I was a broken man.  Now it turns out that I am quite literally a broken man after my time down in Oxford last week: I've cracked a toe.

Like all good accidents, it's got nothing to do with working in the shop and may be a tiny bit booze related.  As I was staying with friends, we tended to take advantage of our time together in the evenings to have a few drinks after work and a glass of wine or two with dinner.  Nothing too dramatic, but enough that I'd wake up in the morning feeling a touch groggy and would look forward to my 30 minute walk into work to blow away the cobwebs.

Friday morning was typical: I woke up an hour or so before my alarm and decided that I needed to pay a visit to the bathroom.  Barely opening my eyes, I stumbled out of the bedroom and down the corridor.  Unfortunately for me, I must have lurched to my right as I did so, and I ended up aiming a hefty kick with my bare foot at the huge terracotta plant pot sitting on the landing.  I don't even really remember hopping up and down much, went about my business and then went back to bed for a bit more sleep.  My foot was a bit sore when I got up, but nothing to worry about.  In fact, I was more worried about the self-inflicted mess I'd made on the nail of my big toe than I was about anything else.  I am reknowned as a butcher with the nail scissors and should not be allowed to own them, never mind use them. 

Anyway.

I took my lunch at about 2pm, and realised that after several hours standing up, my foot was now pretty sore.  I took off my shoe and sock and saw that my little toe and half of my foot had turned black with bruising.  Ouch.  By the end of the day, as well as being sore, the toe itself was pretty swollen.

Obviously, I still went for a 5 mile run on Saturday morning, but oddly that seemed to be okay and just walking in ordinary shoes was causing me more bother.  Now, I've cracked ribs, fingers and assorted other bones in my hand before, and I had a pretty good idea that it wouldn't actually make all that much difference in treatment terms whether my toe was broken or just bruised (apart from healing time), so I put it out of my mind as best I could.  As the swelling subsided though, I could see a definite kink in my toe, so figured I'd better just double-check that assumption with the doctor.

When making the appointment, I was pleased that this time I had the gumption to refuse an appointment with the idiot doctor I'm actually registered with: he's famously irascible, and when I saw him about the boxer's fracture on the side of my hand a while back, he dismissed me from his office as a time-waster and that it couldn't possibly be broken.  When I went back to see another doctor a couple of months later when my hand was still troubling me, she told me immediately that it was broken and that it was a shame I hadn't come in earlier when they could do something about it.  Grrr.  This time, idiot doctor was the first appointment I was offered.  I nearly took it, but then asked when the next appointment was.... next slot, same doctor.  At this point, I just asked to see someone else, and happily signed up to see the trainee instead (they're almost never busy, as working in my dad's surgery years ago has taught me... especially if they have a foreign sounding name.  They are, of course, usually excellent doctors and as keen as mustard to make a good impression on all patients.  Take a tip from me: always worth seeing).

So yeah.  The long and the short of it is that my toes is probably cracked.  It will be swollen and painful for quite a long time, and will also feel cool to the touch, but as long as it doesn't get infected, then it should be okay and there's nothing much else anyone can do.

Oh, one final piece of advice though: I should apparently try and avoid hitting it on anything else for a few months, as that will likely prove to be excruciatingly painful.

No shit, Sherlock.

Stupid body. 

I suppose that means that you'll have to put me down as a doubt for the 3rd round matches of the FA Cup.

you can knit a sweater by the fireside....

I was in Oxford at the weekend.

As usual, on Saturday morning, I went for a run with my friend Rich.  Rich is a touch older than me, and usually runs at a slightly slower pace than I would normally do.  This is never a problem, but as it was the morning after the night before, I was more than usually happy to tootle along gently for five miles, enjoying the beautiful morning and slowly blowing the cobwebs away.

Oxford is a nice place to go for a run, with the University Parks providing a lovely setting for a saunter around some beautiful lakes and playing fields.

It is, of course, also filled with students exercising.

This wouldn't normally be a problem, except that they are usually all at least half our age, and as they fly past us like gazelles as we huff and puff around the grounds, it's hard not to feel slightly resentful of them.  There is some consolation to be had in the lycra clad bodies as they zoom past, I suppose... but not that much.

Apart from anything else, these students aren't very friendly.  There's an unwritten rule amongst runners that we're all in this together: it doesn't matter what shape you're in or how fast you're running, it is your responsibility to acknowledge your fellow runners.  It doesn't have to be much: a smile, a cheery hello, or even a look of shared pain.... but it should be done.  The students don't follow this rule, and it's very dispiriting to give someone a friendly smile only to be completely ignored*

* Rich tells me that one young blonde thing we ran past was very quick to give me a quick warm smile - both times we ran past her as we each completed a circuit of the Parks running in opposite directions - but if that's true, I was oblivious to her attentions.  Honestly.

The last mile or so back to Rich's house consists of the long drag back up Headington Hill.  This is one of those hills that is steep enough that buses and lorries can't climb it when it snows, and after four miles and a skin full of wine the night before, it was a bit of a struggle for us too.  As we hauled our way uphill, we were passed by a young lady powering her way downhill.  She was probably only in her early 20s, if that, but she looked like she meant business and had a very focused look about her.  She managed to break her concentration for just long enough to give the pair of us a withering, appraising sideways glance as she swept past us, freezing our warm smiles even as they left our lips.

We turned to each other as we continued our pitifully slow progress towards the distant summit of the hill:

"Pah.  Anyone can look good running DOWN the hill.  She should wait until she's got another twenty years on the clock...."
"Yeah, and she should try it on your knees...."

etc.

We're so old.

As WB Yeats almost said:

When you are old and grey and full of sleep,
You try running up that bloody hill with a hangover. 

Envying the young for their youth is an especially futile exercise, no?

yours sincerely, wasting away....

Perhaps it's my imagination, but at some point in my time away from work, I realized that I looked significantly older. I don't really think of myself as an especially vain man, and I've been balding and greying for at least a decade without giving it all that much thought, but all of a sudden, I looked in the mirror and felt as though I had reached some kind of a tipping point: the odd grey hair had become very definite grey flashes, there were now several white patches in my stubble, and the grey hairs on my chest now had a beach-head and seemed to be massing before an advance.

I also am suddenly aware that it's only a matter of time before I'm going to need reading glasses too. As my surgeon warned me, this is something that short-sighted people don't really notice - you can always look under your glasses to read small text that you otherwise can't focus on.  It's now been 2 years since my eye operation, and I've really noticed the change in my ability to focus on things very close to me. I'm at about 20cm now (which is fine), but I'm reluctantly resigning myself to the certain knowledge that one day my arms won't be long enough.....

Well, perhaps that's what taking 9 months off work will do for you.  It seems that it was only my job that was preventing my an even faster descent into decreptitude. In no way did it cross my mind that it could possibly be related to all the additional quality time that I was spending with my lovely wife.

How could you think such a thing?

I'm 36 years old. What else did I expect to happen as I got older? Why should I be different to anyone else?

As I'm never likely to risk my sexual function for the apparent regrowth of my hair, rogaine was out of the question (who the hell thinks that's a trade off worth making?).   I'm also unlikely to reach for a packet of Just For Men. The grey chest hair is a bit of an affront, but I don't actually mind the grey flashes everywhere else (and no, I've not found any THERE yet, although I must confess that I'm not obsessively looking....) As for the reading glasses I will likely have to wear. Well, so be it.

I guess I'll just have to live with the visible signs of ageing. Well, that and stepping-up my already rigorous facial skincare regime, obviously (it was pointed out to me when I was diving in Australia and wondering why my mask was leaking, that I had deep canyons on either side of my nose heading down towards the edges of my mouth that were channeling water in. They're not wrinkles, they're laughter lines, right?)

I've worked with lots of people in my office for several years, and one of the things that I have noticed since my return is how some of them - particularly the ones around my own age - have visibly aged in the nine months since I last saw them. It's not that everyone looks older or anything, it's just that some people look distinctly older since I last saw them. Of course, when you see people every day, you don't tend to notice the gradual changes that happen to everyone: people gain weight, go grey and lose their hair all the time, it's just that normally you see it happening so slowly that you barely notice. I've returned to work to see people suddenly (to me) looking a bit older, a bit greyer and a little more worn-out than when I last saw them.

I imagine they're saying the same about me. At least they've got the excuse that they've been at work, right?  I've been travelling around the world and look at me....

Being slightly wistful about the ageing process is probably par for the course, but trying to do anything much about it is to be like King Canute trying to arrest the flowing of the tide.  Pah. Give me age and wisdom anytime. I wouldn't be nineteen again for all the tea in China. I didn't know what to do with hair when I actually had it.

Besides, now I'm old, grey and married, I'm apparently much more interesting to the opposite sex (so my wife tells me.  I can't say that I've noticed). Where were they when I was younger and might have had a use for them?  Tell me that.

Ah well, in the midst of life we are in death, etc.

And he carries the reminder of every glove that laid him down....

Some six weeks ago, I took a bang on my hand whilst playing football. It hurt, and given my track record of breaking digits playing this stupid game, I was initially a bit concerned. However, the unattractive prospect of several hours sat in A&E waiting for an X-Ray deterred me from taking a trip to the hospital, so I took some ibruprofen and decided to sit it out. As the pain subsided a little over the following few days, I thought it was probably all going to be okay.  Another minor ailment to add to the pile caused by playing a game I've never really been any good at and should probably retire from before I really hurt myself....

I did ask a doctor about it when I went for my flu jabs a few days later, but she advised that it could well be deep tissue bruising and that I wait to see if it was still bothering me in a couple of weeks time before taking things any further.  Fair enough.

Two weeks passed, and although all visible signs of bruising were now gone, the pain in my hand was, if anything, getting slightly worse. The damaged area was on the outside of my right hand, just below the bottom knuckle of my little finger. The knuckle itself looked okay, but I appeared to be developing a lump on the side of my hand. Hmmm. Perhaps I should get this looked at properly after all.

I made an appointment to see the doctor, with the expecation that I would probably be given a slip to take to the X-Ray department at the hospital. No chance. The doctor I saw this time - the one I'm registered with, as it happens - hardly looked at me before throwing me out and telling me to come back in six weeks. I was barely in his office for a minute before I was walking back out to my car wondering why I'd bothered. This guy has something of a reputation for this, it's true, but I'd naively expected better this time around. Certainly better than the short shrift he gave me, anyway.  I thought that doctors are supposed to be encouraging people to come and see them, especially men, and not making them feel like their trip has been a total waste of everybody's time.  If many of them are like this, I'd be surprised if anyone went to go and see them at all.  Perhaps that's what he wants?

As the weeks wore on, my hand continued to bother me, becoming stiffer and more sore with every passing day.  I started to become acutely conscious that I was going skiing towards the end of January and then onto Hong Kong, Australia and New Zealand. If there was a problem with my hand that required treatment, then that doctor's attitude may have delayed treatment by several weeks and was now potentially going to cause me real problems.... but at the same time, I was reluctant to make another appointment and to get it looked at again as I didn't want to waste anybody's time...Perhaps I really was just making a big deal out of nothing?  Even if there was something wrong, by now I was almost afraid that they could do something to help and had visions of being put into plaster. It seemed unlikely, but a plastercast would be a nightmare: stopping me from strapping on a pair of skis and presumably necessitating a trip to a doctor somewhere in the southern hemisphere (they have doctors there, right??)

As a last resort, I decided to ask my dad when I was at home for Christmas. My dad's a doctor and so in theory an excellent person to ask, but in practice he can be pretty unsympathetic himself when it comes to his own family's minor ailments. I can't say I blame him really: when you spend your days examining sick people, the last thing you want when you get home is to be presented with a load more.... and, to be fair, when I've been really ill, he's always been fantastic. In fact, it's a pretty good rule of thumb that if my father is concerned about you, then you know you've really got something to worry about.

As it happens, he was great......he had a good look at my hand and pronounced that there was some significant deformity below the joint and that it was likely fractured. There's nothing much that can be done, but he suggested that I tape up my hand for a few weeks to prevent movement of the joint and to promote healing. He also told me that this kind of break is -- brilliantly -- called a "Boxer's Fracture", and now it's all taped up, I look like I've been in a fight over Christmas.

Just don't tell anybody that I received the injury when the ball bounced down off my chin when I was performingly as incompetently as ever in goal and ricocheted down onto the my hand.  Not quite as a manly as a fight, I'm sure you'll agree....

Given that I also appear to have cracked a toe over the holiday period, it seems that I am surprisingly breakable at the moment. Perhaps I'd best retire to bed and stay there until I board the plane at the end of January?

Tempting..... Very tempting.

---

Sorry to go on about this, but I still need your 5 votes for the Earworms of the Year 2009 countdown.  At the moment it looks as though Lady Gaga is all over this, although her vote seems split across several songs. If you feel strongly either way about this, then you need to email me your votes without delay!

Details are here.

I'm a pincushion....

Today I have:

• received a seasonal flu vaccination in my left arm
• received a swine flu vaccination in my right arm
• been poked in the back by 10 acupuncture needles at the osteopath
• injected myself in the thigh muscle of my right leg with beta-interferon

I really do feel a bit like the proverbial wotsit.

Still, as I'm a glass-half-full kind of a guy, I'm choosing to focus on the happy fact that my left leg remains entirely untouched by any kind of needle at all. 

Today, anyway. 

....based upon my experience today, however, I wouldn't care to speculate on what might happen to it tomorrow.

(Anesthesia)

As I casually bit into a carrot the other day, about the last thing I was expecting to find was a stone.... but there it was.
Crunch.
Crack.
Ow.
I imagine the carrot must just have grown around the stone and at some point assimilated it. When all you are expecting to bite down on is a nice crunchy carrot, this is somewhat less than ideal. My tooth was a bit sore, but nothing appeared to drop off, so I put the rest of my carrots to one side and tried to forget about it.

A few days later, and my tooth still seemed to be a bit sore, so I thought I'd better go and see the dentist to make sure I hadn't broken anything. My next scheduled appointment isn't until next June, but they managed to find me a slot this morning.

Over my life, I have had absolutely mountains of dental work done. It may come as news to anyone who has had to listen to me sounding off on any number of topics, but I've apparently got a very small mouth. I certainly had more teeth than I had mouth, and over the course of my teenage years I had a variety of extractions and orthodontic work done in an attempt to make my teeth vaguely presentable. If you can think of a type of brace, I've had it. I've had metal train tracks to pull my gappy teeth together; I've had a brace with a key that I turned once a week to open it out to widen the gap between the left and right sides of my jaw; I had a brace I had to bite down onto to level out the massive bow in my bottom teeth; I had a brace with hideous cheek plates that warped my whole face; I had some headgear that used elastic bands to push my teeth further back in my jaw..... even today, I've got a metal wire attached to the back of my bottom teeth to hold them straight. I had my wisdom teeth out too, naturally. No room for them in there, so out they came. Under local. Which wore off halfway through. As the dentist was wrestling with a tooth, practically with his foot on my chest as he pulled as hard as he could. Twist, twist, crack.

Yup. I've spent a lot of time at the dentists over the years and - perhaps oddly - the dental surgery doesn't really hold any fears for me. Luckily for me, in spite of the fact that all this pushing and shoving appears to have softened my teeth, I've not really needed much in the way of fillings since then, and my annual visits are usually short and sweet. I've noticed I'm becoming more nervous of these visits as I get older, but they happen so infrequently and I need so little done, that it's never been a problem.

I was a touch nervous this morning as I sat in the waiting room awaiting my appointment. I didn't know if I'd cracked my tooth or not, and I'd not seen this dentist before and so didn't really know what to expect. He was younger than me, of course, and he insisted on shaking my hand before I sat down in the chair. He then made small talk with me.... Goodness, I'd travelled a long way across Nottingham. Where did I work? Oh, that's not so far away from here. Have they started taking graduate recruits again, or has the programme been affected by the credit crunch? How long had I lived in the area? Where were my family from?

....and so on.

All very well, but as soon as he'd put the chair back, adjusted the lamp and started to poke around inside my mouth, I'd rather assumed that the small talk would come to an end. Does it qualify as small talk if there's only one person in the conversation? Isn't it a bit odd to be attempting to exchange pleasantries with someone who cannot reciprocate?

He seemed nice enough, but I found the whole thing slightly unsettling, and an image crept, unwanted, into my head:



Szell: Is it safe?... Is it safe?
Babe: You're talking to me?
Szell: Is it safe?
Babe: Is what safe?
Szell: Is it safe?
Babe: I don't know what you mean. I can't tell you something's safe or not, unless I know specifically what you're talking about.
Szell: Is it safe?
Babe: Tell me what the "it" refers to.
Szell: Is it safe?
Babe: Yes, it's safe, it's very safe, it's so safe you wouldn't believe it.
Szell: Is it safe?
Babe: No. It's not safe, it's... very dangerous, be careful.

Anyway. Apparently the tooth looks okay and I've probably just bruised a ligament.

I didn't even know teeth had ligaments....every day's a school day, right? Oh, and apparently I eat too much fruit too.

Just 364 days until my next appointment.

Szell: Oh, don't worry. I'm not going into that cavity. That nerve's already dying. A live, freshly-cut nerve is infinitely more sensitive. So I'll just drill into a healthy tooth until I reach the pulp. That is unless, of course, you can tell me that it's safe.....

Can't wait.