Empty headed

 Empty headed.  Head in the clouds/Clouds in the head. Nothing between the ears.  The spaces inbetween.

This is Sir Edward Elgar's head.  To be more explicit it is part of one of three sheet steel portraits of famous local people, erected alongside the nearby cycle path.  And Sir Edward, a keen cyclist himself apparently, was indeed illustrious and it's fitting that the path passes close to the site of his house on the edge of town.

I'm so pleased I can now walk the fifteen minutes or so to reach this.  The cycle path was opened last year but it's only recently that I've been fit enough to get here. Energy levels are still very up and down depending on the day but on good days it's not a problem.

 I shall return.  These figures plus a camera have a lot of potential.

New times demand new skills

Doctors ....... struggle to find the time—or lack the skill or motivation—to listen to patients, elicit essential information from them, and fully understand what matters to them.

Patients and their families are often frustrated by this. Most “get” that there are constraints under which doctors and public health systems work. But when the stakes are high, they will—and surely have the right to—seek other options in or outside their own country, and to expect their doctors to listen and discuss their findings and viewpoints sensitively, however well or ill informed they may be.

Tessa Richards
Senior Editor, British Medical Journal
 
 Dr Richards' complete post is definitely worth a read and rings all sorts of bells with me, given my mixed experiences with the NHS over the years and my now regular online searches for information on own health issues.  Like most of the country I have been following the sad and worrying Ashya King controversy where it would seem the boy's father's searches on the internet for information on the best post-operative treatment for his small son's cancerous brain tumour brought him into a breakdown of communcation with the doctors.  He fled the country with his family in order to access the treatment for his son he wanted in the Czech Republic, fearing that the hospital would invoke an emergency protection order taking away his control over the boy's treatment.

Ashya King’s father scoured the internet and challenged the Southampton doctors’ decisions. It’s a scenario that health professionals have got to get used to. Information is being democratised, and suggesting patients should not access it on the grounds that it may mislead them is absurd. The new reality for doctors, as the jargon puts it, is to “act as guide, not God,” and to avoid branding patients who do their own research as difficult..............

Ashya King’s case raises many questions. Among them, what price should impeccable professional credentials command if a doctor can’t win the trust of patients and their families, and agree a way forward? New times demand new skills.

Tests

July is turning into a month of tests, medical tests. Blood. Urine. Etc.  Something is amiss and they (the NHS and the nutritionist - coming at it from different angles) aren't sure what it is. Even the trifling exercise of taking blood samples sends me into minor shock, physically and then emotionally.  The dam wall is breached. Tears and more tears.  If I didn't realise it before I do now: these days I'm a delicate flower.

Now, the wait for results. The last one won't be through till early August.  How's the thyroid?  Liver?  Kidneys?  Blood glucose?  Haemoglobin? Inflammatory markers?  Metabolism? Just give me answers. Tell me what's wrong.  And (hopefully) what's right. I want hard facts. Enough of not knowing, of fog. 

Today a bit of recuperation. Pottering around the house in the ad breaks of the Tour de France.

Crash

Let's just say the journey back to health is a slow, tedious but at the same time wild ride.  There are days when I feel pretty good and the sun shines and the birds sing and the daily walks are a pleasure, and days like today when exhaustion rules, the brain is foggy and there is a Black Hole where my solar plexus used to be. This won't last I repeat to myself like a mantra. And I believe/know it won't. It just can't. 

The PC's hard disc crashed a couple of weeks ago and in retrospect I'm glad that most of my photos disappeared.  They weren't very good and the ones that were I'd already put onto Flickr.  Let go, let go, let go.  If I don't then the universe steps in and does it for me.  Happy though that I'm now able to download photos once again.

On days like this I get particular sustenance from colours like this.  Taken yesterday.

Time

Yesterday this particular online groceries delivery man recognised me. He hadn't been on my route for a couple of years - the supermarket seems to switch them around regularly and with one or two morose exceptions they are to a man affable and friendly.  He helped me unload my fortnightly order and asked how my back was.

When he last saw me I was on strong codeine-based painkillers and had to lie on the floor for a good part of the day.  I remember he commiserated with me at the time and told me how he'd had similar problems before taking his current job and now he hauled heavy crates of groceries in and out of his van all day. Yesterday as he passed me the packets of salad, tins of sardines and the bottles of extra virgin olive oil he said that he believed that all this heavy lifting had actually strengthened his back.  Using the muscles, moving, bending at the knees,  keeping the weight close to the body.

He's right. I'm not where I was two or three years ago. The pain levels in the back are much lower and I'm off the codeine.  I'm moving more freely, with greater confidence.   I didn't want to inflict on him details of the gut and digestive stuff which has taken over as the number one health nuisance but seeing him again is good reminder.

A little gratitude is in order. Heaven knows I'm not where I want to be healthwise, but looking back it's clear that nature and time are doing their job.  Slowly.  With a bit of luck and a prayer the progress will continue.

Twelfth House

In [the 12th House] the progressing Moon gives a person the opportunity to examine his life from a perspective broader than that of self-gain and self-interest. If a person will not take this opportunity then he will be forced to acknowledge that there are other ways of looking at the situations in which he has been involved, even if this takes imprisonment, hospitalisation or the loss of loved ones. During this period of his life a person frequently feels lost and lonely but nonetheless, it exists as an opportunity for him to rethink his life and use his future more wisely than he has used his time up to that point. That opportunity will be at its most obvious and most pressing as the Moon reaches the closing degrees of the 12th House - just before a new twenty-eight year cycle begins.

The DK Foundation
 http://www.dkfoundation.co.uk/dkfoundation/BookTransitsBook12.htm

Yup, that's me right now.  Looking back over the past months and the state of my life and relationships is sobering, as indeed it has been all the time I've been ill.   Horribly tempting to see myself as a victim.  I have to ask am I really, and if so why.  Why does the behaviour of others trigger the old childhood feelings - not good enough, not worth making the effort for, feelings that have been a leitmotif throughout my life.  You are so strong and independent people say to me.  And I am.  But I'm also lonely much of the time and that's very hard to admit.

What this period of ill health and consequent isolation has done is give me the space and time to deal with some of this.   I've not only let go of junk food and clutter; some  family relationships and friendships have faded away as well. Illness has changed the dynamics.  All but two I accept as having ended naturally, but the remaining two I grieve and ache for.  Disappointment and disillusion are hard.

The isolation has been needed.  Awful but needed.  I've needed to understand how strong I am as well as how weak. Sometimes - not so often now thankfully - the physical pain and discomfort have been so excruciatingly bad I wouldn't have been able to cope with anyone around  me,  also the loneliness has provided the framework, the space and time to think and dream and hope, to take care of my diet and health without pressure from others.  There is solid satisfaction in cleaning up my act. (Mustn't forget either to thank the two therapists, the cranial osteopath and the naturopath, who in different ways continue to haul me out of the pit).

As I said, sobering.  But given where I was in early 2009, almost certainly necessary.   And going into 2014 I'm not unhopeful that with honesty and vulnerability, as well as strength and independence, things may change. Even though I'm sixty-four.  My dreams are more mundane and realistic now but that's just fine. 

Spider

I was tidying up in the kitchen yesterday afternoon when a black spider appeared close to my right eye.  I tried to brush it away and realised it wasn't a spider at all.  It was a large black floater dominating my field of vision.  It sank out of sight and a few minutes later came back again with a couple of small friends.   Panic.  But since the PVD diagnosis for the left eye a few months ago, I knew what to do, called a taxi and headed for the Eye Casualty clinic at the local hospital.

Five people ahead of me but I didn't mind. Just being there was a comfort. I would be dealt with. Leafed compulsively through the one magazine on the waiting room table. A local community newsletter about Hay on Wye.  I read through the features, returned to the beginning and started scrutinising the small ads in desperation. The spider came and went.   The other five: an elderly man and his male friend; two women (I couldn't make out which one was the patient) and a young lad with a cold chatted and/or stared at the ceiling.

Called into the triage section.  A motherly and reassuring nurse took the relevant details and put dilation drops into both eyes.  A different waiting room.   They'd made an effort with the decor - prints of cheerful impressionist paintings, an Ansel Adams photograph.  More magazines.  A wider selection here: She, Good Housekeeping, Country Living,  and even Hello (I know, I know, when you're in a hospital waiting room you'll read anything. It occurred to me that I only recognised about half the celebrities featured).   I was contemplating tackling a caravanning periodical when my name was called.

It was obvious Dr Patel knew what she was doing. She sat opposite me at the ophthalmology machine.  Chin on the machine, a succession of dazzling bright lights, white and blue, in the eyes.  Look upwards to the right.  Downwards to the left. Focus on my right ear.  Keep your eyes wide open.  I know it's hard.  She handed me a tissue.

So it's just PVD again.   Floaters rather than flashes this time but the same thing.  Grateful to have been seen.  Grateful to be reassured.  Still have to watch out for the signs of a possible retinal detachment but I feel like an old hand at this game now.

On the way home I debated why I hadn't asked my neighbour to accompany me. At the hospital  I had alternated between a wistful melancholy that I had no-one metaphorically to hold my hand but at the same time I was relieved at not having to worry about anyone else's welfare - especially with the long wait.  My neighbour is lovely but I don't know her well enough to feel comfortable in this kind of situation. It seems that when the chips are down I rely on myself. This is the way life is now and I'm not sure I am capable of changing it.  Besides, I've been robbed of my independence these past few years and it felt good to get a little of it back.

The spider is still with me this morning.  Maybe as time goes by I'll start to get fond of him.

Snippets

A straggly buddleia has pushed its way through the asphalt of the residents' car park adjoining my garden, right next to the fence.  Apparently, according to a rather fascinating TV programme on weeds I caught the other week, it is categorised as an invasive species in the UK and is spreading like wildfire, often on the most unpromising terrain.  Wikipedia further enlightens me that in the US states of Oregon and Washington buddleia is considered a noxious weed, something like Japanese Knotweed.  But I will resist the surreal temptation to have at it with a flamethrower and a machete a la The Day of the Triffids; the butterflies love it and that's reason enough to leave well alone.

****


More oomph and confidence these past weeks though by evening energy levels are flat. But then I've always been a lark rather than an owl. Pleased that I'm managing to tolerate the full daily dose of probiotics after months of painstakingly building up the dosage.  Slowly does it - each time I've tried to increase the amount too quickly the result has been horrendous, they're powerful little blighters are probiotics. The naturopath wants to put me onto some cutting-edge antifungal magic potion over the autumn so maybe this improvement will convince him it's time.

From childhood until very recently I've eaten badly.  Not all the time, but periodic compulsive - and I do mean compulsive - junk food eating binges were the main opt-out when the anxiety and stress were overwhelming.   The digestive system took the punishment seemingly without complaint.  Not any longer. Some of it is probably genetic; my father had similar digestive issues.

Now the gut has finally said Enough. It's started throwing temper tantrums.  And it's telling me loud and clear how much it's suffered.  So I don't feel self-pity at the pain and weakness and headaches when they hit.  Natural justice.  High time for me to make reparations and look after the digestive system better in the future, which I'm happy to do.  Maybe in time I'll even learn to love it .....


 ****

The taxi driver was middle aged and wiry with a tattoo on his left forearm and had his car radio tuned to Classic FM.  A Mozart symphony welcomed me in.   Nice, I said.  This kind of music keeps me sane, he replied. A pause.  Do you mind if I put a CD on?  You'll love this, it sends shivers down my spine each time I hear it.   He pressed a few buttons and turned up the volume.

As we waited at the traffic lights in the 4 x 4, Noah Stewart's voice enveloped us. Schubert's Ave Maria.  Words would have been out of place. In the blustery afternoon sunshine we moved on when the lights changed, crossed the river and headed for home.

Movement

Sunshine and brief showers today with a warm southerly wind  that carries along with it these cloud formations that change with the passing second. This is the sort of summer weather I like. 
 
The letting go continues and a lady called Lin is coming to pick up the cat basket tomorrow afternoon. I've tried to live a well-adjusted life.  I mean love and stability and companionship and job and belonging.   Money only as a means to an end. Nothing has worked - and the higgledy piggledy pile of books and possessions that I'm sorting through demonstrate this.   Massage books (can't do massage any more, nor do I want to). How To books. Crafts that were abandoned.  Co-dependency books. Journals.  Detritus all. Being ill has given me the space to understand to that indeed nothing could have worked. Not with me being the way I was and everything and everyone else around me being the way they were.  The fit was never there.

Stripped to the core. Feeling like a newborn at 64 years old. It's a relief to be this age and not to worry about so much that used to distress me. Each thing I surrender - and I do so willingly and with relief - stokes the fire that moves me forward. 

Wait

A still, shimmering afternoon. Sunlight, so bright, so strong, dazzles and drives one into the shade.  Early mornings and evenings are best in this heat, though - intermittently - there is the softest breath of a breeze. The houses around the green and their occupants seem to doze peacefully.

The naturopath says that my system is getting more robust with each visit but energy levels are down from when I last saw him two months ago. Unsurprised by the latter.  Since May there have been mice in the bedroom wall, a posterior vitreous detachment and a nasty fall-out with a close friend (which please God will be resolved - though I don't know how).   Stress and fatigue buttons have been well and truly pushed.  But I persevere with the anti-yeast diet and he will be starting me on a new treatment at the next appoinment - or at least soon.  Not ready yet. We wait. Not easy for someone who is naturally on the hyper side. 

So. High summer. A time apparently to hold still.  To let things be as they are. 

And today this story makes me happy for all sorts of reasons. My father had mild dementia in the last year or so of his life.

Flashing

You see, I don't want to come on here and just tell you about my ailments, which  I've been doing a lot of recently.  So I'll tell you about the Posterior Vitreous Detachment in my left eye diagnosed by the local optometrist. It doesn't count because it's not an ailment.   The helpful and reassuring piece on the RNIB website, says so.  No, it is a natural change that occurs in the eye in many people as they get older and the symptoms are floaters and -  the thing that is really stressing me out -  rapid light flashes on the periphery of the eye concerned, particularly in the dark and dimly lit conditions.  Apparently these symptoms can last from a few weeks to a year, with most cases settling down and resolving at around six months.  So it's a fairly long haul.  Just to up the anxiety, in the first two or three months you are more at risk from a retinal detachment, though this is fairly rare, but if the symptoms change or worsen I have to get to A&E pronto. My friendly neighbour has volunteered to ferry me there if necessary, day or night she says.  I'm grateful.

Six weeks in now, and I'm staying in well-lit places, including sleeping with the bedside light on because I can't cope with the firework display in my left eye when I awaken in the dark.

Why had I never heard of this?

****

The theme that resonates more and more is : simplify.  Things you no longer need - give away what you can, sell anything you can sell.  When I'm fit enough the plan is to downsize and move to a smaller property closer to the centre of town which requires less maintenance. Walk to the shops, to the library, to see friends. I no longer want to fritter away nervous energy on stuff that drains me needlessly.  Time and health are increasingly precious, dear God they are.

  Pretty pink.  The new gardener, Brian, nice man, gave me some cuttings. 

Festina Lente

It's part of testing my limits and strength I suppose.  I had a wobble this morning - did too much, attempted to lift something just a little bit heavier than I can manage.  I didn't actually lift it but the slight bending and even the partial effort caused a back muscle to twinge.  I think I'm OK but I've scared myself.

When I get caught up in a task or project something akin to obsession - enthusiasm's shadow - can take over and common sense is all too easily cast aside.   I can't afford to let this happen in the future, it's how I first  injured my lower back four years ago.  Vigilance has to be the watchword when it comes to health, and to be truthful I'm not sure I know how to change, how not to be caught out again.

And I so want to have my life back.  I'm doing more, trying new things, making plans to venture out of the house.  All good but it would be terrible to let obsession and impatience ruin it.  For now at any rate, caution trumps everything else.

Now to let the panic subside.  Wait.  Think.  Breathe.  I need my guardian angel to materialise at moments like the one this morning, tap me on the shoulder and remind me.  Festina lente.  

Lavender and Blackbirds

One of the joyous side effects of the sorting out of my gut flora has been the occasional flare up in the sinuses (don't ask me why, but apparently it's not uncommon).  I've never been particularly prone to sinus problems.  There's no sore throat or cold or flu, no swollen glands, just a dry burning pain at the top of the nose that at times makes me want to rip open my nasal cavities with my bare hands.  

The first bout was in early March when I tried to increase the probiotics dosage too suddenly; then a badly upset stomach was accompanied by the world's worst ever sinus headache.  Fortunately I had an appointment already booked with the cranial osteopath who worked her usual magic and the pain dissipated the same day. A second flare-up yesterday; this time the osteopath's on holiday and anyway it isn't that bad, but it's bad enough.

So switch off the central heating (too drying), open the windows to let in the damp rainy air and steam inhalations every few hours.  A towel to cover the head and a bowl of hot water with a couple of drops of lavender essential oil.  Surprisingly soothing.

But I wish it would all go away.

By way of homage to the modest but so useful plant, my own lavender bush a few summers ago - a magnet to the bumble and honey bees of the neighbourhood. 



(For anyone out there with an astrological bent my natal Moon at 25 Aries is currently  being battered by the ongoing planetary line-up and, yes, in particular Mars.   So no surprise perhaps.)

****

A pair of blackbirds have built a nest in the large evergreen shrub (nobody, not even the gardener, can identify it) by the compost heap. Peering into the shrub's depths the other day I caught sight of the female sitting on her eggs, quiet and unmoving.  I feel honoured.  The downside is that I won't be able to have the lawn mowed for several months until the young ones leave the nest for fear of driving the parents away, but do I care if the back garden resembles the savannah grasslands come June?  No.

Lungwort

 noun

1a bristly herbaceous European plant of the borage family, typically having white-spotted leaves and pink flowers which turn blue as they age.

[so named because the leaves were said to have the appearance of a diseased lung]

Oxford Dictionary

 

In the garden the lungwort is flowering under stress. It has been ambushed by the weather, having been lulled into a false sense of optimism by the few relatively warm days we experienced earlier in the month.  I'm fond of it. I was given a couple of plants about five years ago and they've spread like wildfire.  With its mottled leaves and small, delicate heads of two-tone flowers it makes for great ground cover, plus it's hardy and resilient with a long flowering season.

I've some fellow feeling with the lungwort. It's been a rough couple of days spent folded up in the armchair with gut and back pain, wrapped in a duvet and drinking lots of water and hot ginger tea.  According to the naturopath the root cause of all this is dybiosis (the GP simply doled out repeat prescriptions for industrial strength antacids).  It will take time and persistence to crack.   I was in a bad way - worse than I realised at the time - in January when I started the treatment.  There has been improvement but flare-ups happen, and may well always do so to a degree.  Persistence is all.

****

At almost a month in I'm glad to be blogging again. I'm doing it almost entirely for myself, which for me is the only genuine motivation, though I'm always delighted and appreciative when old and new commenters drop by. But if one person reads what I have written, that's enough; in the real world I'm not one for crowds.   It's becoming a lifeline, the writing and the photography, that I'm grabbing onto to haul myself back to what passes for a more normal existence. No, I don't have exciting or deep things to write about but that's not the point.  The point is that I'm doing it.  Practice.  Like the Buddhists. The way I was put to the piano as a child morning and evening to practise my scales. 

Most importantly of all, it's a way of stepping into the current of life, of sticking two fingers up to pain and weakness and all that goes with it.   Each post, each photograph taken, builds momentum. 

Waiting

The back is a bit stronger; the camera has been dusted off; the new PC/printer installed, and there's been a totally satisfying decluttering of my little office. I'm doing more. 

But decades of comfort eating and stress have caught up with me of late, brought to a head by the last three years of opiate painkillers for the back and glucose energy drinks.  Plus a couple of courses of antibiotics for good measure.  Grappling with some horribly tenacious digestive issues and a very inflamed and temperamental gut which triggers migraine-like headaches.  (If you're reading this and you're prone to both stress and overdoing the sugar, don't be like me and think it won't catch up with you ).  The positive news: I've been able to stop the painkillers and hospital tests show nothing dramatically nasty in the stomach.  So for now I'm  living on good quality protein, home made chicken bone broth as recommended by the naturopath I'm seeing, and lots of vegetables, probably the healthiest diet I've been on since mother's milk.   And vitamin supplements plus a probiotic at night. No sugar. No yeast.  No grain.

There has been improvement. But it's taking a long time.  Some days (quite a few actually) are distinctly yukky.

***

Three weeks of Mercury retrograde finishes this coming Sunday, so maybe more of a sense of movement.   Looking forward to spring. 

Flowers. Daffodils - pale cream this week.   They come to my door each Saturday during the season with the online groceries.  Last week's were an intense egg-yolk yellow, standing straight and resolute in their blue vase.

   
Taken a few years ago, this one.  National Museum of Wales coffee shop, Cardiff.

Taking stock

As is so often the case, the biggest hurdle is fear. I am going to have to live with a degree of pain. Not all the time, thank God, and not always excruciating, but flare-ups happen regularly. The usual contributory factors, stress, tiredness and so on and sometimes the sacroiliac joints just inflame and stiffen for no reason. But pain per se I can manage.

What scares me is the prospect of the recurrence of the sacroiliac instability that dogged me for months, in spite of treatment, at the outset of all this. The fear of the instability that the pain conjures up is the stuff of nightmares. According to the doctors, because of the strengthening effects of the course of prolotherapy that I underwent, a reasonably active life within limits should be possible. I'm trying to believe them but I'm dubious; in my experience doctors definitely don't have all the answers when it comes to backs, particularly my back. Nonetheless I am reclaiming - slowly - my beloved walking and I might learn to at least tolerate swimming because it's such good therapy. But the body will need kindness and attention. It has to be the priority. No exceptions.

Now to learn this, digest it, face it. Live it. Learn when to take the painkillers and apply icepacks and rest. Learn how to take care. When and how to exercise. How to try and desensitise myself to the uncertainty, because it's a given. Learn not to panic and sink into despair with every ache and twinge. And the incentive is there because I want my damn life back. There's so much I want to do.

Today I'm in a no-man's-land in the recovery process. Can't remember what it felt like to be fully fit. Body and mind are taking their own time to heal. Energy levels can and do plummet frighteningly at the drop of a hat and muscles are still too weak, but I'm not as prostrate nor as debilitated as I was. I do some basic pilates exercises daily. A, the cranial osteopath, has helped more than I can say. I'm thinner, so I'm told, and also my hair is greyer. Things will be very different going forward, I know that, and not just because of physical stuff. In the isolation of the past two years I've changed, become tougher, but in a good way. The boundaries are firmer. Integrity now matters more than anything. So life and my relationships will change.

Right now the craving is for human company, human warmth - not all day every day, that would be too tiring, but for short spells. There's a way to go but I'll get there. I will.

****

Fear is the cheapest room in the house. I would like to see you living in better conditions. Hafiz - trans. Daniel Ladinsky

Therapy

Just about a year ago, as Saturn approached the ascendant, the ligaments of my lower back and sacro-iliac joints gave up the ghost. The centre, literally, could no longer hold. Displacement, severe muscle spasm and weakness and flare ups of acute inflamation and pain. Since then a repeat prescription for cocodamol, a round of alternative and conventional medical treatments and far too much TV.

It's dawning on me that the job is to rebuild the centre - and what is more central than the pelvis and lower back, and what they represent? Or rather to give it space to do the rebuilding. I imagined my centre could look after itself while I led a busy life but apparently this was not the case. Maybe this was the only way to get my attention. After much inner resistance I am revisiting relaxation and meditation techniques.

Six weeks ago I ventured outside again. Ten yards and back home, fifteen the following day, then twenty. Today I reached the next street up from mine. The first goal is to reach the river. At a guess, I'm just just under halfway there. The strangest feeling, learning to walk again. Each time I go out, a mixture of pleasure mixed with terror lest there is a setback. Learning to trust this body that, seemingly, has turned against me for a season.

For the first time for a long while I hanker after the scent of essential oils. Lavender scented body lotion, orange and ginger shower gel. The physical as a source of peace and pleasure.

A desire as well to get creative. Photographs. Blogging.

About the same time as the back went, the computer hard drive died, and with it my stock of photographs. Right now I'm using a friend's PC, loaned on approval. No photography programmes so no new photos.

But thank god for Flickr. I'll be reviewing my on line stockpile and posting some of them here from time to time - at least for as long as the back stability lasts.

Therapy, you might call it.

Heatwave

The humidity and heat - 28 degrees and rising - bring with them a fretful quiet, a slowing of activity. Of necessity. Impossible to think clearly and quickly, to move at a pace beyond minimal. My office is up four flights of stairs, on the top floor of a converted 18th century townhouse. No airconditioning. The south facing sash window is jammed wide open in the vain hope of capturing a breeze, the sunblinds drawn. As an emergency measure we set up an electric fan on a folding chair between our two desks, taking care as we come and go not to trip over the cable. In spite of natural inclinations the work rate slows and I put off anything beyond the basics, the simple. My margins are very thin in high temperatures. The fan's turbulent air blows papers off the desk and dries the eyes.

My office colleague is American, born in the desert lands of the South-West. She loves this weather, flourishes in the heat, goes to the sauna regularly in winter for physical and emotional health. We manage our thermostatic differences and make allowances for each other - I dress in layers for flexible temperature control, she brings extra woollens. I sweat occasionally for her, she shivers from time to time to keep me happy.

****

A first appointment with a local shiatsu practitioner this afternoon in the ongoing quest for spasm-free muscles. Shiatsu worked miracles for my lower back in 1993. The first session was a Wednesday evening and I had to take the rest of the week off work, nose and eyes were running so much afterwards. A continuous stream. Not a cold, or flu. Detox.

Later in the year, in the October, a major life change occurred for which I am thankful to this day. I still believe an apparently unrelated series of events including the fact that I am alive now - a tad melodramatic but possibly true - were in some way triggered in a treatment room in a basement flat in North London that evening in May sixteen years ago.

In my book, everything is connected and in ways we can't begin to imagine.

Stretching

The shoulder and neck are better, though not cured. Too much time on the computer, using the mouse and the dull throbbing starts. Moderation, that most elusive of qualities, is my holy grail.

The immediate goal to work on the cow face pose, which with my hypermobile joints I used to find so easy in yoga class. One arm reaching backwards over the shoulder, the other behind the back reaching up. The hands clasp. Once I was proud of my prowess, glowed when the teacher praised my flexibility. Yes, I know, self-congratulation is at variance with the non-competitive spirit of yoga, but that didn't stop me. The karmic comeuppance is that these days I can just about manage the pose on one side only. Impossible to move the right arm upwards behind my back.

The difference between a year ago and now is still dispiriting. A lesson is humility. Also in self-forgiveness: nobody made me sit at the laptop for hours at a time without taking a break

I'm supposed to do exercises three times a day. Some days it's only twice but Sheila the physio is pleased with progress and the gap between our appointments has lengthened from weekly to fortnightly to monthly. At my request - she knows I do massage and is supportive - we name the muscles, bones and joints beneath her fingers as she works, massaging and stretching contracted muscles, neck then arm then shoulder, me on the couch, her standing alongside. A litany, a recitative: Pecs minor, scalenes, subscapularis, levator scapulae, coracoid process, C4 and C5 ....

When we tire of A&P we talk about cats, hers and mine. Or gardening.

I turn onto my back. She places both hands, one over the other, on the injured shoulder, leans her weight forward onto her arms. Clavicle and sternum are pushed towards the spine and my lung capacity is reduced by what feels like 90%. She's a large woman in her early forties, as tall as I am and a former shot putter, solid and muscular. The effect is not dissimilar (I imagine) to being run over. I close my eyes, wonder if my skeleton can take it, imagine the pistol-shot crack of fracturing bone.

At the end of the session the muscles in the right shoulder and arm feel blessedly looser. Silent prayers of thanks for the NHS. And for Sheila. We've almost, in a way, become friends. Not quite, the professional relationship takes precedence, as it should.

But I like her, and I'm grateful.

****

A visit to a National Trust garden last week. I couldn't tear myself away from the spiralling, unfurling ferns. Uncurling. Releasing. Stretching out of themselves.

Abeyance

Writing The End seems far too final. Impossible not to leave the door slightly open.

Nonetheless, after two plus years and three blogs the time has come to stop, at least for a while. A combination of the RSI (which is serious and painful and which I need to take seriously and blogging really doesn't help) and the awareness that, physical injury apart, I have been spending more time than is beneficial in front of the computer screen.

So, in abeyance until further notice. At least until the summer.

Three months of minimal computer work, the physio says.

After that, we'll see.