Greek holiday day 1

 Earlier in the year, life seemed just so grim. I was injured and nothing I did seemed to change that. I was working with Ross, a personal trainer, and sometimes we made progress and sometimes I injured myself anew. Peter had sciatica which lasted for a good 8 weeks - at its worst he couldn't sit for long and couldn't lie in bed for long. It dictated everything he did. In the background, but not really in the background of our minds, Peter's brother Neil was getting more and more ill. We were making trips up the road to Aberdeenshire to see my mum, who at the time was 97 and not happy and not well. (Now she is 98 and not happy and not well.)

It's the 2nd half of life. Carl Jung, who is a bit of a hero for me spoke about it like this;

"Wholly unprepared, we embark upon the second half of life... we cannot live the afternoon of life according to the program of life's morning; for what was great in the morning will be little at evening, and what in the morning was true will at evening have become a lie." 

He says something like we have to spend the first half of life building up an ego and learning how to live in the world and then there comes a turning point at which we have to let all that go. I think this has a lot to do with identity - like the notion of yourself as "a runner". It isn't a fact about you - or not a permanent feature - you're only a runner until you aren't. You realise after a while you're in a body with a shelf-life, and what you think of as 'your times' are just a distant dream that someone else did - or you did when your body was younger and more able to adapt.

In the therapy world there's a lot of chat at the moment about the 2nd half of life and us becoming "elders" and how enriching this is - and I think it's well-meaning, but it bypasses how painful it is to see your old certainties dissolve and old cherished notions shipwreck on the shores of reality.

In my cherished-notion world, Neil would not have died, and I would still be a runner, and my mum would say inspiring things that would help me face the next few decades; always presuming that's what I get. But Neil is gone and I haven't been able to run consistently for well over a year now and my mum - understandably - struggles to be even barely rational from one day to the next because she is in pain and nearly blind and dependent in a way she never wanted to be.

So that is how I came to the notion that maybe we should go on a Butterfly Holiday. I knew it would be an easy sell to Peter. He had sort of hinted at the possibility before, but the price is steep compared to our usual holiday budget - could we invest in such a luxury? I mentioned it to Peter and soon it was pretty much a done deal. It shook him out of some of his lethargy - he had to get busy, get a new passport, sort out his insurance - all things he would kick down the road indefinitely unless there was a deadline and a good reason to address them.

So time steamed on, as it does, and it was time to fly...

I don't want to cover the same ground as Peter, but it's difficult not to, given we often took pictures of the same things. We landed at Athens airport and the first thing we had to figure out was how to get the Metro into the centre of town. I had googled the journey and got us an inexpensive hotel near the city centre metro stop - it's so impressive that you can do all this online now - but you never know how reality is going to match up to the plan you have made. On the ground, figuring out the metro thing was not easy - we were carrying big, heavy bags, it was hot, and Greek has a completely different alphabet. It just gives you no clue. It might as well be alien symbols - in fact that's what the signs made me think of.

The oldest inter-railers in town.

klingon

Peter got the metro tickets and instructions from a woman who seemed to know what we were asking. "Go downstairs and take the metro on the right hand side."

We got to the bottom of the stairs with our heavy bags at the exact same moment that a busy train pulled in and the doors opened - it was do or die. "Get it!" said Peter, so we got in. After the doors closed he raised the question of whether it was really the right train. "Too late for that now matey" I thought to myself. I tried to match up what I saw on my phone with the Klingon symbols on the metro map, but the symbols were tiny, the train was busy and I couldn't get close enough even really to see. I couldn't even figure out what direction we were going in. After three stops or so the train went deep underground and there was no phone signal. Eventually we arrived at Monastiraki station, which is what we'd been hoping for, got off and made our way up several elevators to ground level and out into the bright, bright sunlight of afternoon Athens.

What followed was a nasty half mile or so with 17kgs on our backs and maybe 8kgs in our hand-luggage, trying to figure out which way the arrow was pointing on the wee map on my phone, shouting at each other a bit. We got there though- to the unpretentiously titled Economy Hotel - and it was more than adequate for what we were needing. It was clean and well-organized and nobody tried to steal our stuff or usher us into the sex-shop round the corner. It had functioning air conditioning, which was very welcome. I used to wonder why Americans made such a fuss about air-conditioning. Growing up in Orkney it was actually hard to imagine ever being too hot.

Later after we'd showered and cooled off, we headed out into the Athens evening to have a snoop around with our cameras dangling round our necks like the tourists we were.

Peter gravitated immediately to a square with more pigeons in it than you can shake a stick at.

I would have liked this ukelele, but our bags were all full.

As we never tired of saying "Acropolis Now"

It was a warm, balmy evening and having eaten and drunk a little bit we cruised around the city centre. There were many restaurants and the owners or managers were on the look out for customers so we patted our stomachs to convey that we had already eaten, thank you. The atmosphere was pretty friendly and no-one hassled us too much.

This couple for some reason wanted their picture taken. Just near here was a dark park which Peter wanted to explore. I wasn't so sure we should wander through there with cameras round our necks and the wetness obvious behind our ears. Just then a number of police on small motorbikes drove by and through the park which I felt lent credence to my point of view.

Acropolis Later

It's my blog and I'll cry if I want to

 So we're into June now. Prompted by pb's comment on the last blog, I thought I should update my injury history. It is surprising how much you forget and then realise later you've been covering the same ground. I just recently started doing a tiny little bit of running - 90s runs with 4 minutes recoveries, because although my legs feel stronger and I can squat and do all kinds of stuff, still when I run my knees and the tendons around my knees hurt. Unless that changes there's not much point in trying to push the running. I'm not even trying to increase it. AI, reassuringly, says this is a thing. Give it 4-6 weeks to let your tendons and ligaments tighten and your meniscus thicken or whatever. We'll see.

But the minute I start to write about the last 2 months, all that matters is that Peter's brother Neil died, so I'm going to write about that.  I was always hoping maybe something might turn around - but it didn't. His breathing got really difficult because his diaphragm wasn't working well I guess. He couldn't clear enough carbon dioxide out of his system. He had a rare form of motor neurone disease called progressive bulbar palsy and it meant he progressively lost the use of his muscles for speech, swallowing and breathing.

He had had trouble with his speech for quite a while and had spent a while in hospital the year before last - at the time the thinking was he had myasthenia gravis which is not great but it's treatable and also it can remit. 

Last year around April he had had the diagnosis of MND dumped on him. From what Neil and his wife Sue said they'd gone to an appointment, some consultant lady in high heels had come in, given him the diagnosis and spoken to them about palliative care. She was cold, didn't listen to them or answer their questions. At the time there was room for doubt. One of the things that she said pointed to MND was that Neil had a tremor, but he only got the tremor when he took the medication that was for myasthenia gravis and was to help him with his speech. We all hoped the consultant lady was just plain wrong. 

We saw them again in July. They had  been away on a holiday in Greece and Neil had got really ill and had been in hospital there. The doctors there confirmed the diagnosis. Neil and Sue were adjusting as best they could. They had been advised that Neil should get a port put in for feeding while he was still well enough because eating would become a major problem later on. They went ahead and did this. Neil said  it was the most incredibly painful thing. In the end it was the right thing to do though.

Neil could still talk but if he talked fast it wasn't easy to follow. You could see the frustration because he was a fast talker, fast thinker - an enthusiast. He got one of these speaking keyboards so he could fill in the gaps when people weren't getting him. He was still working - pretty much up to the end. He did something high up in computer systems in banking. 

Neil got into doing digital art on his i-pad and making up songs using AI. He'd been doing the digital art for a while actually, and sending stuff to Peter. When we were in Tenerife in December Peter got a number of tunes through from Neil on Messenger and we'd listen to them sitting on the bed. It was great to see him leaning into having fun and being creative and also almost unbearably sad. It gives me a pain in my heart thinking about it. Oh for that fucking diagnosis to be taken off him. He loved his music, he loved his art, he loved his work, he loved his wife and his children and absolutely loved his grand-kids.

So by the end of February we were hearing that Neil was having a really hard time with his breathing. He couldn't sleep lying down because he couldn't get a breath. It was making him feel panicky all the time. Various things were tried but I guess nothing really worked, or worked for long. Peter went down for the day with his sister Anne, scared about how bad it was going to be. Neil was tired and having to manage his time and energy - having to retreat and rest but doing some stuff with them.

In April he lost consciousness and was taken into hospital. It looked like he might not last the night - but he somehow swam his way back up to the surface. I think what was making him lose consciousness  was that the carbon dioxide in his system just would not clear, he couldn't get enough breath. He was stabilised in hospital for a few days and we all went in to see him. He was fully conscious but he couldn't see over his breathing mask to type on his talking machine, and he was tired anyway. That was the last time I saw him. In a couple of days he got all the family in and they all said their goodbyes, because he was going to come off the mask which he was hating. He died in the early hours of April 22nd with his immediate family around him.

The family did all they could to make something positive out of the situation. His niece Amy, who didn't run at the time, decided to run a marathon to raise funds for the My name'5 Doddie Foundation. She took to running easily and completed the Edinburgh Marathon that has just been in  a sub 4.20 time. In better conditions she will go sub 4 easily, but the weather had just changed from cold to hot pretty much over-night and so adjustments had to be made.

Amy in the last few hot miles of the marathon.

Ryan - Neil's youngest son -and his partner (soon to be husband) Brian signed up for a half marathon to raise funds for MND Scotland. They did that at Edinburgh too. We set out to cheer them on but got caught up in several transport snarl ups on the day and so missed them and were only just in time to cheer on Amy in the marathon.

All the grandkids did the shorter races on the Saturday and managed to raise several thousand pounds for MND Scotland.

Their fund-raising links are below if you wanted to contribute;

Amy, Ryan and Brian and the grandkids

It would have been lovely to join in with all this and it was disappointing to be side-lined and unable to run.

Thinking I would write this I was wondering this morning if I have any photos of Neil and was delighted to find I'd blogged our Death Swim. This happened in the middle of the winter 2014 - 2015 when Peter and I were going in the sea once a week on our submergathon. We had been round to the Buchanan's for Xmas and Ryan, Neil's youngest had said he wanted to come on one of our "Death Swims". A couple of days later we went to Gullane and did it!

Here are some pictures of us with our winter weight on! It was a fantastically cold day, the 29th December 2014 and only fools would dive into the icy sea on a day like that. So here are some pictures of some fools :-).

Neil, Ryan and Peter diving.

Neil makes a splash, Ryan turns into a dolphin and I think that's Peter!

No way!! Yaaaah!!!

retreat to shore

Peter and Neil

I'm not sure who this fat lady is.

Ryan, Neil and Peter

Back to shore - Sue in the hat with towels!

I wish we'd had the chance to do lots more things together but Neil's life was busy and full with family and work coming first, and you can't hug all the cats.

The first 4 months...

rain and sunshine

On a whim I had a look at my last blog today and saw that it was in December. I have a few things to tell you about my "injury journey". 

"Are you running like a gazelle now?" I hear you say.

Well not exactly.

Not exactly running at all in fact.

I gave it up a couple of weeks ago, and I haven't missed it.

Anyway, this is what has happened. I went to see Dr Pain Steven McQuinn again somewhere about January, and I told him I wasn't really getting anywhere with my running and I was thinking I might just shelve it for a while because it wasn't even enjoyable any more. I told him I was thinking about going to see a personal trainer or someone to help me get stronger, because I'd tried this on my own before but I knew that I was likely doing everything wrong and creating more problems for myself in the future. 

He said he went to a gym nearby and it had a few personal trainers there who he thought were excellent, so I looked it up and I made an appointment with Ross, who I have now been training with since maybe January or February. He listened to my story and got me to do some things and prodded the old legs and declared them stiff, tight and weak (but maybe more tactfully than that) and we agreed that I'd strip the running right back, or maybe even just do easy cycling while I tried to get stronger and more flexible.

I tried to do that, running  on awkward sore legs sometimes and retreating onto my indoor bike other times. Every time I rode the bike I hurt my left knee. Every time I ran I hurt something behind my right knee. In the meantime I did do the exercises he was getting me to do and I began to stretch every day. I hated the stretches at first and I still don't love them but sometimes now they make me feel better whereas at first it just felt kind of fruitless and unyielding.

We've been focusing on trying to reach the mythical region - the posterior chain - a land where people use their bum to do things. I did have a go at that back in 2023 when I'd goosed my knee. I went and saw a physio at the Edinburgh uni gym who gave me a host of exercises with exactly that in mind. I did do them and I continue to do them but apparently that never got them glutes firing.

Steven McQuinn was on the same thing - "You should be using your powerful core muscles" (He meant my booty :-) )

Me- "yes, but where are they, and how do you use them?"

Looking back on it I realise my left knee has been pretty good for a while now, so that's progress. For that I had to do squats with a band round my thighs and push my thighs out the way - I mean outwards - not just get them out the way!  For a while I thought I would only run, because moving between the bike and running was more confusing than just doing one thing or the other. I was just doing 3 or 4 miles though, at snail's pace, and every time I ran the back of the top of my right calf and the lower part of the hamstring would be irritated for a day or two. I was away on a course in Bristol in March. I took my resistance bands and did my exercises in my room at night. I went a couple of runs in the morning too and then limped for the rest of the day. It was embarrassing. Last time I was down there I was recovering from a presumed stress fracture in my foot, but I was running better than I was this time.

Running along the River Avon at the crack o' dawn.

We met every day in a big room. It was a bizarre set up. The lead trainer was an Israeli woman and she had been meant to have flown over for it, but the thing in Iran kicked off 2 days before the course started, and she couldn't get out of Israel - so - through the miracle of the internet she was beamed into the room on a big screen, as a fellow course participant remarked, like the Big Friendly Giant. I don't exactly get the reference but I liked the phrase.

For the first couple of days she had to leave abruptly on several occasions to go down to the bunker as there were air strikes on wherever she was in Israel. It made it all remarkably real.

It was a therapy course so as you can imagine everyone in the room had to introduce themselves and say a bit about themselves. A woman sitting behind me announced she was from Singapore and she was pleased to be here and then started to sneeze. She showered me in sneezes for a day or two, and when I got back from my course, I began to shower Peter with Singaporian sneeze water. You are it, pass it on.

I forgot to mention, all this time that I'd been barely running and injured and what-not, Peter had a big bout of sciatica. It started a few days after the 7 hills and 7 Beers shenanigans, which he ran with Nick. I was quite honestly surprised he survived. He came in after it and announced that he was alright, he was fine, then he went through to his computer and I found him there a few minutes later with his head in his hands. He hadn't drunk anything except beer or eaten anything and I think I maybe got him to drink a cup of tea. He wanted to tell me all about it but in that slow, ponderous way that the very drunk do, you know, that way that makes you want to kill them?

He went off to bed and even though I wanted to kill him I was also a bit worried that he might just die, so I went and listened for his breathing a few times. He was breathing fine and emerged  a lot clearer and now hungry a few hours later.

That was a hillier run than he'd done in quite some time and on the Monday he went out and did a coastal run too - and then somewhere about Wednesday his back started to hurt him and then in the next day or two he entered a world of relentless sciatica pain - which is just clearing up properly now. For the first while he really needed looking after because he couldn't stand up for long, couldn't sit for long, couldn't lie for long. It was a misery for him.

having a lie down in Leith

Sciatica boy

I got to try out all my gadgets on him which I've accrued since I started to take my career as an injured athlete really serious c.2021 or so. I've got infrared wraps, I've got a TENs machine. Neither of those things had much impact. I've got an infrared sauna blanket. That didn't help much. I had quite recently got a massage gun. I didn't think all that much of it, but that punchy little baby pretty much saved the day for our Peter. He'd wake up in the night with horrible crampy pain and then pummel it away with the massage gun.

This baby saved the day

So how did I get onto Peter's injury? Oh yeah, I felt guilty leaving him for a week to go to Bristol, but he had started to be a bit more ambulatory and was getting out for walks, so he had his birdy pals to talk to - men who lean on walls and look at birds, and there were some frozen dinners in the freezer.

But when I came back I gave him my cold. We both had it.

Then after a week of having a cold and not even bothering to run because it was rubbish anyway, I went for a run and 2.6 miles into it I got a sharp pain up the side of my right calf and had to pull up swiftly.

I was hurpling for a few days and it began to ease up but that did it for me as far as running went. I figured I would just forget about it until I was truly feeling better or never, whichever came first, and then start from scratch. I started cycling on the indoor bike again and something had changed with my left knee because it didn't hurt it any more. I still had to be careful of my right calf on the bike and couldn't go full gas at all - but it felt like modest progress.

So I went along to see Ross last week and all I'd done was strength training and bike training and my legs were relatively fresh and I had  a bit of a dream session - until I didn't. Everything he asked me to do I could do and from his face, I was doing it more easily than he'd anticipated. I was impressing myself. I was doing lunge walks with weights and high side planks and I can't even remember. But then he got me to jump onto one of these bouncy BOSU half balls and off again. I really didn't want to jump because of the loss of control, but after a few goes it was actually fine. But then he wanted me to jump on and then jump off backwards onto one leg at a time and land it. I wasn't super-keen, but I hoped I would just get away with it. It didn't feel great and then - bang - something was really sore down the inside of my right knee. I had that sickening feeling. I could still move it, but, you know, you can still move an injury for the first wee while before it seizes up. Phil Davies finished the Ian Hodgson Mountain relay on a complex fracture after he'd put his foot down a hole. The adrenaline gets you through.

So I walked the mile home on an increasingly sore leg, made it up the stairs, dreading the moment of when Peter would shout "how did it go?" and I've have to tell him I'd fucking fucked my stupid leg. That's code for I am beside myself with an intolerable mixture of regret, anger and despondency.

So that was Wednesday and it's Saturday now. I haven't been outside since. The first day it was just sore all the time. The next day I could get comfortable but it was super sore to walk on. I had to sort of warm up before I could put my weight through that leg and then not stay on it for long. Yesterday was a little bit better. Today was better again. I had a shot on my indoor bike. Garmin was suggesting I do a super-easy session and normally I don't bother doing those because it seems pointless. But today it seemed like just the thing. I listened to a talking book.

I've found two books to cheer me up over the last few days when I've not really been able to do anything at all. One was "In my time of dying" by Sebastian Junger. He wrote 'The Perfect Storm' which I don't remember all that well but I remember that it was well written and gripping. This one is about himself where at age 58 and ostensibly fit and well, he has a near fatal bleed from an aneurysm and is lucky to survive. The book covers the incident, the medical side of it, his brush with death during which time his dad appears and tells him to just relax and go with him. Sebastian's reaction to that is "No way!" He tells the story of his dad and his dad's death and the aftermath of his own brush with death and his questioning of what it's all about; his need to make sense of it. That was what I was listening to on the bike today. It's a good read (or listen) - he's a good researcher so he tells you lots of interesting things along the way. 

The other book is a book by a woman who was a yoga teacher with her own school who went out skiing at the age of 48 and had a horrendous accident in which she broke her neck. She is immediately paralysed and has to find a way to adjust to that. One thing is that she is more in tune with her body than most of us are because of the yoga. She finds ways round things - for instance the medical staff don't want her to come off her breathing apparatus because she can't use her diaphragm but she is convinced that she can breathe and in fact does manage to, and she also recovers some use in her arms and also her bladder control. She's a little spooky and senses energies, but also very practical and works now in...I think Vancouver...but with people with new spinal injuries and within the health system. She says herself she isn't a writer but she has a lot to say - so her book isn't the best written ever, but it's really interesting. And it's helped me get my injury into perspective - because - at least I can move my arms!

It's called 'Where Science meets Spirit' by Mary-Jo Fetterly.

So, to sum up; this runner is not running at the moment. Maybe later. But I did 10 press ups the other day. I know that's not very many but I haven't been able to do any since I got a frozen shoulder in 2021, so it pleased me. 

The other thing is I got another new gadget which is compression massage leg things. Called Fit Kings. I really like them. First of all I got some...I think it was Urevo ones which also had heat and I really liked them but they were faulty and so I had to send them back. The Fit Kings seem more sturdy and likely to last and they will do fine.

compressed air leg massagers

Look my phone smoothed my face out. I never asked it to!