In some ways I think the fact I haven’t felt compelled to write anything for a week is a positive sign. My legs are still the worst problem. I can pretty much cope with the level of pain I’ve now got – well most of the time at least – and that’s despite cutting down on the tramadol.
I was back in hydrotherapy on Thursday and was amazed at how much more flexible my horizontal movement is in my upper spine. I didn’t think I was as tired after it as I had been the week before, but then having got showered and changed, I walked along to the staff canteen for a meeting with a couple of colleagues and spent an hour absolutely knackered and trying to contain the head sweat that started about 10 minutes into the meeting ( and therefore a good 20-30 minutes after I’d finished exercising).
Friday was a pretty good day in terms of pain level for general well being, so inevitably I worked for too long. Saturday morning was puppy training time. That always takes it out of me because of the frequent bending down, and so I made use of one of the camping chairs in the corner of the paddock. I didn’t feel too bad for the rest of the day though, but by Sunday morning I had a lot of pain right in the centre between my shoulder blades and my legs were extremely stiff, particularly the lower part of my left leg, which felt about as flexible as a plank of wood.
My legs had eased up a bit by the evening so we took the dog round to the park. In a show of defiance I opted to leave my stick at home, knowing C would be with me to lean on should I need her. I would’ve probably been ok if we hadn’t bumped into another Boston owner (C has seen him there before), who kindly offered us some harnesses etc that his dog (now 4yrs) had grown out of, so we walked round to his house to get them.
Yesterday I fully intended to start getting up at a going to work sort of time – thought I’d better prepare myself for actually going back to work next week. However my back was again very painful and legs (mainly the lower left again) very stiff, so it took longer than expected to get sorted. After a lazy(ish) morning doing bits on the computer, we went to the local pool in the afternoon so I could do some of the exercises from hydrotherapy. Two things to say about that; public swimming pools are not as warm as hospital hydrotherapy pools, and secondly I’m crap at knowing how much I should do when there isn’t a therapist there to guide me. I felt pretty much ok at the time, but I knew I’d overdone it when I tried to get out of bed this morning. Once I eventually got myself moving just before 9, it didn’t take long for my left leg to start to loosen and, on the frequent times I’ve torn myself away from my work PC to have a move around, I’ve felt quite ok in terms of discomfort – just wobbling around as has become normal.
10 hours working (minus several breaks) is probably going to come back and bite me tomorrow, and I will hopefully learn from that. But then ….
I definitely feel like I need to go back to work next week now, and most importantly I feel ready to go back to work next week – albeit on a phased return. The wonderful people at work are in the process of having a shuffle around so that I can have an office on the ground floor. I’m going to miss my old office – I’ve been in the same one for getting on for 20 years now – and in particular being so close to my teams and the other teams we work with most of the time. However, traipsing up and down 2 flights of stairs umpteen times a day for meetings is not practical for someone who can trip over on the flat, let alone using stairs. Now I just need to hack my teams’ webcams so I can keep an eye on them. 😀