10 months, could do better

Sooooo 10 months today since I became bionic.  I would love to say my world has been transformed, that I’m back dancing, riding, zip-wiring, ice-skating, roller-skating, generally all round action figure, poster girl for any sanitary product.  Sadly not.  Though to be fair I’ve never been much good at skating whether on blades or wheels.  I did go to school with a girl who was in Tampax adverts though!  Anywayyyyy, that’s me off doing my shiny moment, totally digressing. Again.  No wonder I don’t do this blog much.  I’m driving myself slightly mad writing it so have total sympathy for any of my 6 readers left.

Actually my readership has changed.  I’ve been getting a steady but very small trickle of hits, only about 1 a day but it shows there’s still some life in the old blog if not in its author.  And the blog dashboard shows where the readers are based.  For some reason, no idea why, I seemed to accumulate a glut of readers in Russia recently.  Today they have all apparently drifted away and France has become the hotbed for people who have inadvertently stumbled across my musings.  Surely nobody in their right mind would go looking for this on purpose. Especially non native English speakers. Heck I can murder our language, heaven help poor foreigners trying to make sense of me!

Anyway back to the topic in hand. And when I say ‘in hand’ I really mean in physios hands.  Yes, I’m back getting treated again as this sodding groin pain has got worse.  In my last blog I was due to see Mr Hoad-Reddick to discuss what the heck to do with me.  Fortunately with him swearing some hippo oath thing and euthanasia being illegal I am still treatable.  We discussed options which include steroid injections as pre-emptive to keyhole surgery.  I hate the thought of the injections but he wouldn’t consider surgery without having first tried the needles.  I said I wasn’t keen on the needles without trying something else first so we have settled on me having a course of physio.  If it doesn’t work then it’ll be MRI scan and then the steroid evils.

So 7 weeks ago I was back in the care of Siobhan, a lovely physio who first treated me for my earlier hip problems 5 years ago and referred me to Mr Hoad Reddick.  To start with she got me doing more hip flexor exercises and I also had some ultrasound and electric shock treatment.  That’s probably not the right term but instead of a gentle tingle building up it just went from zero to taser instantly!  Anyway roll on 3-4 weeks and it was getting no better, some days it was really worse and feeling it at night lying down.  Still infuriatingly fine when walking, very little discomfort and then only when doing stairs.  But the knee lifting kills it and rolling onto my side pulls in the groin really hard now.  Then she tried a different approach with more massage and it did feel a little better so having spent 9 months religiously stretching my hip flexors I was told to stop doing that and instead to focus on the muscles in the back area.  Seems that maybe I went off walking so much in the early days, and in my style quite quickly and striding out, and my hip flexors were doing a lot of work with my glutes not strong enough to support things, so my joint may have moved too much and caused capsulitis.  Obviously nothing to prove exactly what it is but I can see why that makes sense and now feel highly ashamed of myself for not doing those bloody bridge exercises as often as I should’ve done.  So in the last 2 weeks I have probably not got any worse but also not got better really.  I’m still back to knicker dangling rather than stepping in, but the last couple of nights have felt easier in bed. 

Today I had my penultimate session and everything she tried…nothing really seemed to hit the mark.  To start with she’d said that I should book myself in to see Mr H-R  anyway even though I still had the session next week with her.  But by the end of today’s session we’d got to that point of admitting defeat.  She feels that she has tried all she can think of and I just don’t seem to be responding.  She said that sometimes tendonitis can just sort itself out but just can’t say what’s actually going on with me.  She did say that the fact I can have pain free spells is a good sign, and it could be that I would just get to the point of having more pain free spells until the pain bits had gone.  I am now at that point of thinking I might as well go back to my dancercise if it’s going to be like this anyway…it didn’t actually hurt to do that.  Siobhan sort of agreed with me though I’m going to resist doing that until after I’ve seen Mr H-R.  So for now she’s signed me off her care, I felt sorry for her as she saw it as a bit of a failure but she has tried so much with no joy.  She’s told me to just get on with things, not even to worry about doing exercises, just walk as I can, enjoy the stuff I can do and try not to sweat it about the other stuff until I’ve gone back.

I did also give my hip/groin a bit of a test 2 weeks ago when I was at a party.  I don’t go out to Kev’s gigs anymore but this was a party for a workmate so I went along, took my heels and even did a bit of dancing.  And about 2 hours later my shoes were off and I was sitting on a chair nursing a painful hip.  That’s left me a bit gutted as it’s our works Christmas party next Wednesday and after the let down last year I was fully intending to be back up in heels dancing round this time.  I will probably still do that but may pay for it the next day.  

At least the next day will be spent at work.  After the party I spent the next day at a sci fi convention.  Yes really, at my age, I know, I know.  It was my friend Lindsay’s idea, Michael Biehn, her bedroom wall hero when she was a teenager..long story cut short, we ended up driving to Trafford Park and joining some very strange people in a large hall with the likes of Kit (the car) R2D2, a few Daleks and a very miserable Professor Sprout.  Miriam Margolyes does not like having her photo taken if you haven’t paid out for the privilege and shouted at me across the hall for daring to point my lens at her.  Totally put me off her and best comment was from one of my friends who summed it up with ‘it’s not like she’s Professor McGonagall’  Norman Lovett aka Holly from Red Dwarf however was absolutely lovely.  Anyway to get to this convention I had to drive for close to an hour the morning after the bad hip night so I was onto a loser from the start.  Then a lot of waiting around just about killed me off.  I had to take a chance to sit down for a while…in a strange bar area with 2 aliens, as you do! But it took the rest of that day before I stopped hurting.  So I’m understandably wary about impending frivolities.  But it’s Christmas, and there’ll be alcohol :)

The only other thing that’s really caused me discomfort has been sitting in small seats with no legroom .  But that had to be done as I got the chance of tickets to Anfield.  To see proper games, not friendlies.  Thanks to Ian at work I got the chance to use his season ticket for the games against West Brom and Sunderland.  Seats are evil – how the hell do tall or very fat people cope?  But this was Anfield, this was my red men, this is the Klopp age.  Heaven is in Liverpool 4.  And to hell with the hip.

Other than that things have been fine.  And as if to make up for lack of airport beeping I got my first squeak.  My hip joint has a ceramic head in a ceramic cup.  Meant to be very hard wearing and good for me being active.  Which I would like to be when the sodding groin gets sorted.  But ceramic on ceramic apparently has reports of squeaking.  This seems to freak out some people at the mere thought. Personally I make enough bloody creaks on bending pretty much anything now so the thought never bothered me.  And I didn’t actually know anybody who had one squeak on them.  Then a week back I was sorting a funny toe out and as I was bent over it I heard my hip squeak.  Twice in fairly quick succession then  that was it.  I even bent over again trying to get it but nothing.  I feel it clunk now and then when doing my squats but that so far has been first and only squeak. And I don’t think anyone else would’ve heard it.  Unless they’d had their head in my lap.  And frankly if anyone is that close there’ll be other things on my mind than an odd squeak!

So bit of a mixed bag really.  Not the glowing A+ report I’d have liked, more like a C- with a red pen ‘see me’ scrawled over it.  But I’m just going to focus on the good stuff.  I can walk fine, I have more time pain free than hurting, I’ve come to terms with the fact I cannot lose weight and just bought more big knickers, and on the ‘good stuff’ side Liverpool are sitting nicely in 2^nd place, 4 places and 7 points clear of Manure.  There’s always a bright side and as it could all go pear shaped by May I’m enjoying what I’ve got for now.

Merry Christmas :)