100 Butts

What is this post going to be about, you might wonder. Well, I have received one more exercise from my physio – perhaps the final exercise – and she calls it a 'bum' exercise, being English. I like to refer to it as a 'butt' exercise, since after living here for almost ten years I still feel silly saying 'bum'. I suppose one could sound more technical and call it a 'glute' exercise.

No matter what you call it, I have to be able to do 100 of them on both sides before I am allowed to swim again. Evil woman! It was a dirty, if effective tactic, to get me to actually do them before I start building in other activities again. I'm up to 50.

So the good news is before too long I should be swimming again, but the really good news is that all the MRIs on my spine and hips came back clear – no slipped disc or anything else. (If you're just joining this blog, the background on this particular story can be found here.)

And after doing about a gazillion hip stretches on the side where my back was hurting, the pain is almost completely gone. So we were being overly cautious with the scans, but at least I can rest assured that it was all residual muscle pain from either my fall down the stairs pre-wedding or the yoga injury made worse by jumping around on it, or maybe even just a lack of hip stretching. Whatever the reason, Super Physio has fixed it – or rather I have fixed it with exercises and stretches.

I don't want to speak too soon here, but for the first time in nearly six years – since I originally started work on my RSI and my more recent back injury from moving house a year ago – I feel really well in my body. And I just want to say, for anyone out there who is currently in pain and is putting in the hard physio work, it's worth it. Don't give up, because getting better is possible. I've had some really dark hours, lots of tears and lots of sweat. It's not just been a mechanical muscle problem, but a work problem (a too-stressful job) and a health problem (chronic sore throat that ended in a tonsillectomy) that also had to be tackled. And it took a long time – but I did it.

Who knows what the future holds for my body. You can't control everything – accidents do happen and age plays a part too. But for now, in this moment, things are good and I'm going to bask in it, at least for a little while.

And only 50 more butts to go.

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Holiday Styles

I've had a request to write about surviving married life. I'm not sure I qualify as I've only been married five months tomorrow. But Saturday, The Hub and I set off on our 'summer holiday' as they say here (as if everyone is entitled to one), and it reminded me that one of the secrets to a happy relationship is figuring out how to mesh your two holiday styles. I suppose it's also a possibility to avoid going on holiday together, but it doesn't sound that romantic (even if it is only a couple of weeks a year).

So if you prefer the latter, best to hone in on your holiday style and that of your other half. In our case, the Hub likes to go places to see things, preferably in a car, and he likes to cover as much ground as possible. I like to stay mainly in one place. Also, I am the only one of the two of us who has a driver's license. So you can imagine the trouble.

After a few knock-down blow-out fights, one of which consisted of me literally pulling over to the side of the road and refusing to drive any further (after three days of non-stop driving), I think we've got it figured out. A holiday where we can stay in one place and take little day trips in the area with the car (preferably every other day, to allow some time sitting by the pool reading or something similar) works pretty well.

This is exactly what we are doing this week. We've both got our books picked out and a list of things to see including churches that contain weird relics, a set of caves and a little island, all in the Istria region of Croatia.

Everyone always thinks that holidays are stress-free and just a barrel of laughs, but the truth is that if you don't plan a vacation that is enjoyable to both of you, it can actually create tension and strife, which can be a really unpleasant surprise. Like the ear ache The Hub developed in Corfu back in 2007, which he still blames on me for taking him to a water park called Aqua Land (he loved it – the water park, not the ear infection).

Enjoy the dog days of summer and see you on the other side!

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If you're interested, to finish up the story, there seems to be no disc problem with my spine. In fact, the spinal surgeon said my spine looked very good for a 35-year-old! However, he is being careful to check that there's nothing else wrong, so sentenced me to some blood tests and yet another MRI. I had it done yesterday and this time they kept my head out of the machine (thank God) and let me listen to music. All-in-all it was a much better experience than last time.

He was pretty sure nothing would turn up in the tests, however, so I suppose the pain is actually muscular (confirming what my physio thought -- getting the scans done was always erring on the side of caution), meaning that it's back to physio exercises – particularly those pesky hip stretches – to finally sort out this one lingering bit of pain. It's a relief though.

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Shrapnelphobia

I'm glad that I didn't know I was going to have an MRI scan yesterday until about an hour before I did. There was no time to discuss it with friends or look it up on the Internet – in other words, no time to fret. Because I'll tell you this, I had enough to worry about when I was actually having the MRI. Extra time to create dreaded scenarios would not have been a good thing.

My first thought? Being put into this type of contraption is definitely what would happen to me if I was ever abducted. This is an amazing way to torture someone – it's just like being buried alive in a space capsule. And I wonder why I was breathing so heavy during my first five minutes in there.

I was also sure there must be some shrapnel in my body that I didn't know about. Before the scan they ask you about all the foreign objects that could be in your body. Dental work, IUDs, metal shavings in your eyes (say what?), and of course, shrapnel. What if I have some shrapnel that I'm not aware of? Secret shrapnel. At one point my knee hurt and I was sure it was because some sort of metal was going to work its way out, like in Alien.

The MRI was loud and long – even though technically, it was only 20 minutes. I did lots of slow breathing and pretending I was in Bikram yoga, comforting myself that at least I wasn't also sweating my brains out. But I swear I could feel the liquid in my body sloshing around due to the magnets moving around my body. And I really have never thought I was claustrophobic, but apparently I am and maybe have some other phobias I also wasn't aware of, like shrapnelphobia.

Of course I was cool as a cucumber on the outside, joking with the radiologists about Grey's Anatomy. This is typical of me. No one believes I'm as anxious as I am. "But you are so calm," they always comment. Honestly, I don't know why this is. Perhaps it is one of my superpowers, the other one being my ability to eat more cheese in one sitting than should be legal (all without an ounce of tummyache).

The day started out nice enough. I went to my spinal surgeon appointment (for the background to this story, click here). And even though he actually made me wait for an hour to see him, he was so nice that I felt guilty and easily forgave him.

After listening to my story about the back pain that has persisted on and off since a year ago and examining me (in addition to reading the detailed letter from Super Physio), he said that my symptoms – where the pain comes and goes, often getting better only to get worse again – was consistent with a disc problem. My heart sank. I was hoping he would say the opposite, such as: "No need to get a scan, you sound fine!"

But no, he said we would get an MRI done and take a look at my spine. He added that typically we'd see a bit of damage to my spine anyway, considering I was born in 1976 and it was now 2011 (his exact words – I like the way he phrased it). Over the years it sees quite a bit of wear and tear, he explained, which is kind of amazing as I'm only 35 – what would an 80-year-old spine look like? Or do you see most of the damage in the first 30 years? (Something to investigate, perhaps)

I am kept quite calm by the fact that my physio sent me to a surgeon who she considers is not "knife happy" (her words). Also, that she thinks the most likely scenario would be a shot of cortisone to calm down the inflammation and then continue with the physio I've already been doing. And what the surgeon said, finally, was that we would look at the MRI scan to see how to make my physio work "most effective". That didn't sound like someone prepared to cut into me.

Luckily, I am seeing him on Monday, so will know quite soon what the scan shows. In the meantime I've been going to yoga and trying not to think about it (not really working). But I have to say, if there is a disc problem, I might actually feel happy, as this past year has been quite frustrating. Now that my neck/shoulders are behaving so beautifully and there's no more pain there, I could really do with having my back sorted out too. And the Hub – he'd really like to play tennis with me. It's a small thing, but it kind of represents the difficulty with the situation. There are tennis courts near our flat and it would be really nice to meet after work, hit the ball around a bit and then go get some dinner. It's the kind of thing that most people in their 30s can do without hesitation. It would be nice.

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