Day2Day

I'm trying to get fitter. This is hampered a bit by my initial attempts injuring my foot.

However, I've invested in some kettlebells which I'm using in a largely unscientific manner to some effect, and I'm using our exercise bike and rowing machine a bit.

Also, on Saturday I helped a friend move house.

As a result of much of the above, I did very little yesterday due to exhaustion.

This morning, to rest my foot further, I chose to use my real bike to take me to the station instead of walking. Man, am I out of practice! I used to ride triple that distance and not feel it when I lived in Peterborough. I shall persevere!

My aims are to improve my cadiovascular ability, improve upper body strength, and shed fat. Easter did not aid with the latter goal.

So I have a really slow heart rate. It's always been slow, at least, as long as I've paid it any attention. When we learnt at school how to take a pulse my fellow students were puzzled. The people on my first aid course thought I must be amazingly chilled out because my heart went so slowly. When taking my blood pressure the doctor got concerned about how slow my pulse is and ordered a suite of tests to check nothing was wrong. It's supposed to be a sign of fitness, which is odd, because I'm really not particularly fit, but there's apparantly nothing wrong, I'm just weird that way.

When I say slow, I really do mean slow. An average resting heart rate is 70-100 beats per minute. Mine is in the forties - the slowest I've ever seen it was 43bpm, but it's usually around 48.

What I want to know, though, is what my maximum safe heart rate should be. It's generally calculated as something like 220 minus your age. But for an average 35 year old that's somewhere around 2.5 times their resting heart rate. For me that's more like four times my resting rate - so is that still a suitable figure to use if doing something intensive like running?

I've had pain in my foot since August. I went to see a doctor, and she said that my own assessment of possible tendinitis based on it hurting in the exact same ways as my wrist's RSI sounded plausible. She recommended ice (done that), antiinflammatories (done that) and rest, and said maybe physio would be an option. However, first she wanted to rule out the possibility of a fracture. So I went to get it xrayed.

Got the results just now. Nothing on the xray to suggest why the right side of my right foot hurts, but they have revealed arthritis around my big toe.

Damnit, I didn't know I had arthritis! I don't want it! And I'm back to square one on the actual issue as I saw a stand-in doctor and the real one wants to examine it for herself.

I appear to have RSI again. I mean, the wrist thing is mostly managed, rarely causes actual pain now. But this, this is new.

I have RSI in my FOOT!

Or so I determine from home diagnosis. Apparantly the pain I get is likely to be tendonitis of the femurial tertius. Back to the ibuprofen I suppose.

I had beans on toast. Two slices of toast and a whole tin of beans. I think that constitutes a meal - it's certainly the closest I've come to a meal this week, anyway. I'm eating again. Yay!

So I got the phonecall and left the building after food. I bought a sandwich and juice in Boots and managed all of about three bites of it. However the juice helped the hunger and didn't feel like it was burning through my stomach lining, which is odd because given the relative acidity of a tuna sandwich and a bottle of apple juice I'd have thought the latter more likely to do that.

Then the afternoon was spent in a relatively pleasant journey to Fleet and a hellish rush-hour-hitting return to Peterborough. Every so often I remind myself why I don't do tube trains at rush hour, and today I excelled in finding the hottest day of the year so far (or possibly not but it felt like it) to really drive home the point.

But I'm back now, I have the ear drops to ward off ear pain should it go back to aching instead of just feeling sore, and in less than ten minutes Buffy starts.

I'm having a good year. With the illness and the awful journey I've got good reason to be utterly pissed off right now, but I'm generally pretty happy with life. This is what my ankhs symbolise. Life and enjoyment of life. Even in the face of public transport.

... my ear isn't hurting! How did that happen?

So do I get drops just in case or forget about it?

So now I've got an earache. I have eczema in my ears, apparently. Every so often this causes an ear infection and I need antibiotic drops to fix it. Of course, to get them I have to visit the doctor. I suppose with my immune system low from the food poisoning or stomach bug or whatever it was the infection got a good chance to attack. It must be 18 months or so since I last got this so I suppose it was about due. *sigh*

NOTE: This entry has a high ick factor. You may wish to avoid it until well after eating.

My left foot hates me. So does my right foot. I am rapidly learning just how much this is so and beginning to hate them right back.

For about two years my feet would ache a lot, especially after they were rested for a while. Because of this I tried not to walk too much because it was painful. shnetti and ang_grrr have both seen me practically begging to go home instead of walking to whatever site of interest everyone wanted to see because of this.

I did some web searching and self diagnosed plantar fasciitis. I later saw a physiotherapist for shoulder problems and mentioned the foot problems. Before I knew it the diagnosis was confirmed, I got foot casts and some physio on my feet and shelled out for orthotics which are expensive plastic foot supports moulded to make my feet stop pronating. They work. I no longer get a stab of pain when I get out of bed every day and I don't have to hobble downstairs supporting most of my weigh on a combination of my arms, shelves and bannisters.

Theoretically I should now be able to wander around to my heart's content, pain free. It doesn't quite work like that. Not unless you take the interpretation of "pain free" that means you don't pay for the pain. But it's not the aching, it's the blisters.

I have annoying skin that blisters very easily. Sharpen three pencils and I have a blister on my finger and thumb. Walk a mile and my feet start growing randomly placed blisters. And it's not that my shoes don't fit, they're fine for anything less than a mile. But I have to walk because it's how I get to work. And it's good exercise.

Different footwear gives me different blisters. I've found the best way of handling them is to burst them, wait for them to dry out and remove the top layer of dead skin. Unfortunately, this kind of depends on giving them time to heal a bit before walking another mile and I'm doing somewhere around 3 or 4 miles a day at the moment.

The blister run down:

One each on the edge of the big toe that meets the shoe. Not really problematic, the skin there is thick and the blisters are deeps and barely noticeable.

One each on the back of each heel just above where the foot meets the orthotics. As with the toes, these aren't really an issue.

One on the inside edge of my right foot, just below the big toe. Slightly painful.

One on the bottom of my foot just down from the space between the big toe and the one next to it. Visibly noticable but not hurting at all.

One on the tip of my right little toe - very painful, and another on the toe next to it that appears to be there to keep it company rather than to cause me pain.

And then there's the really nasty one on my left foot. Between the big toe and the one next to it and extending down onto the ball of the foot. Very painful. When it develops with every step I can feel it getting bigger. When I burst it it gives relief, although it stings and under normal circumstances all would be well. But it keeps coming back! The raw skin under the blister got a blister, and when I released the liquid contents the space underneath it grew yet another blister. It's horrible. I've got blistered blisters! The same thing is happening with the one on the right little toe. I've tried plasters, I've tried different footwear, I've tried salve - no joy.

So this morning I took to my bike to minimise the walking. My legs feel like jelly.

That is the story of the blisters. There is more - there's thick and cracked skin on the heels, and odd boney lumps on the back of my feet. But those I can live with. The blisters are the current bane of my existence and I'm tired of limping.

Stupid feet.

Please don't let me have RSI. Please let this weird feeling in my hand be something else.

When my little finger on my right hand moves over to hit shift or return (I touch type) I get this odd sensation in my hand, right at the base and edge of it. It's difficult to describe, it's like a shooting numbness or a tiny tug inside my hand - it's not particularly uncomfortable, just a bit distracting. But this on top of that odd lump that appeared from nowhere on my wrist (suspected ganglion) make me think I should probably be making a doctor's appointment. And it's moving week - possibly the most inconvenient time this could have manifested itself.

But if it's still doing it in the morning, I'm making the appointment. And this is the last typing my right hand is doing tonight.