(Anesthesia)

As I casually bit into a carrot the other day, about the last thing I was expecting to find was a stone.... but there it was.
Crunch.
Crack.
Ow.
I imagine the carrot must just have grown around the stone and at some point assimilated it. When all you are expecting to bite down on is a nice crunchy carrot, this is somewhat less than ideal. My tooth was a bit sore, but nothing appeared to drop off, so I put the rest of my carrots to one side and tried to forget about it.

A few days later, and my tooth still seemed to be a bit sore, so I thought I'd better go and see the dentist to make sure I hadn't broken anything. My next scheduled appointment isn't until next June, but they managed to find me a slot this morning.

Over my life, I have had absolutely mountains of dental work done. It may come as news to anyone who has had to listen to me sounding off on any number of topics, but I've apparently got a very small mouth. I certainly had more teeth than I had mouth, and over the course of my teenage years I had a variety of extractions and orthodontic work done in an attempt to make my teeth vaguely presentable. If you can think of a type of brace, I've had it. I've had metal train tracks to pull my gappy teeth together; I've had a brace with a key that I turned once a week to open it out to widen the gap between the left and right sides of my jaw; I had a brace I had to bite down onto to level out the massive bow in my bottom teeth; I had a brace with hideous cheek plates that warped my whole face; I had some headgear that used elastic bands to push my teeth further back in my jaw..... even today, I've got a metal wire attached to the back of my bottom teeth to hold them straight. I had my wisdom teeth out too, naturally. No room for them in there, so out they came. Under local. Which wore off halfway through. As the dentist was wrestling with a tooth, practically with his foot on my chest as he pulled as hard as he could. Twist, twist, crack.

Yup. I've spent a lot of time at the dentists over the years and - perhaps oddly - the dental surgery doesn't really hold any fears for me. Luckily for me, in spite of the fact that all this pushing and shoving appears to have softened my teeth, I've not really needed much in the way of fillings since then, and my annual visits are usually short and sweet. I've noticed I'm becoming more nervous of these visits as I get older, but they happen so infrequently and I need so little done, that it's never been a problem.

I was a touch nervous this morning as I sat in the waiting room awaiting my appointment. I didn't know if I'd cracked my tooth or not, and I'd not seen this dentist before and so didn't really know what to expect. He was younger than me, of course, and he insisted on shaking my hand before I sat down in the chair. He then made small talk with me.... Goodness, I'd travelled a long way across Nottingham. Where did I work? Oh, that's not so far away from here. Have they started taking graduate recruits again, or has the programme been affected by the credit crunch? How long had I lived in the area? Where were my family from?

....and so on.

All very well, but as soon as he'd put the chair back, adjusted the lamp and started to poke around inside my mouth, I'd rather assumed that the small talk would come to an end. Does it qualify as small talk if there's only one person in the conversation? Isn't it a bit odd to be attempting to exchange pleasantries with someone who cannot reciprocate?

He seemed nice enough, but I found the whole thing slightly unsettling, and an image crept, unwanted, into my head:



Szell: Is it safe?... Is it safe?
Babe: You're talking to me?
Szell: Is it safe?
Babe: Is what safe?
Szell: Is it safe?
Babe: I don't know what you mean. I can't tell you something's safe or not, unless I know specifically what you're talking about.
Szell: Is it safe?
Babe: Tell me what the "it" refers to.
Szell: Is it safe?
Babe: Yes, it's safe, it's very safe, it's so safe you wouldn't believe it.
Szell: Is it safe?
Babe: No. It's not safe, it's... very dangerous, be careful.

Anyway. Apparently the tooth looks okay and I've probably just bruised a ligament.

I didn't even know teeth had ligaments....every day's a school day, right? Oh, and apparently I eat too much fruit too.

Just 364 days until my next appointment.

Szell: Oh, don't worry. I'm not going into that cavity. That nerve's already dying. A live, freshly-cut nerve is infinitely more sensitive. So I'll just drill into a healthy tooth until I reach the pulp. That is unless, of course, you can tell me that it's safe.....

Can't wait.

somebody put me together....

Some eighteen months ago, a few weeks after an ill-advised game of basketball with the Ultimate Olympian, and worryingly close to my wedding, I discovered that I had broken the ring finger on my left-hand. The joint ballooned up, and as well as making the sizing of my wedding ring rather challenging, I was told by the distracted looking doctor in the fracture clinic that this was going to take perhaps two years or so to heal (the joint was already in pretty bad shape as it was the same one that I had dislocated playing rugby several years before). Fast forward to today, and although the joint is still a little swollen, the wedding ring has come down by more than three full sizes and I've just about stopped feeling the need to tape it up when I play football.

So what do I do? I somehow manage to do pretty much the same thing whilst playing football about 6 weeks ago. At least it was a different digit this time.... although that's only a small consolation when you suddenly discover how much you actually use the thumb on your left hand.

Having been through this before, I didn't exactly rush to the doctor. Instead I iced the joint when I got home, sat out the bruise and generally tried not to think too much about it. It was only six weeks later, when I kept banging the damn thing, that I wondered if I should get it checked out. We men are always being told that we should go to the doctor more to get things checked out, so I went to the doctor.

"Ah, yes. The joints in the hand are very susceptible to this [no shit Sherlock]. There's no point getting an x-ray as I'm afraid there's nothing we can do. The joint is damaged and it may take a couple of years to heal and to come down to a more normal size. Try not to bang it too much in the meantime, as that will only make it worse. Have a happy christmas".

Two years? Try not to bang it? It's my thumb man!

*sigh*

With the last 18 month bringing me a chipped elbow, the broken finger, some torn ankle ligaments, a cracked rib, a suspected broken toe and now the damaged thumb, do you think my body is trying to tell me something?

---

We're up to the number 8s in our countdown of the year's top 10 albums over at the Auditorium. Given that we've chosen The Feeling, Metallica and Glasvegas, it shouldn't be too hard to work out which one LB picked, which one bedshaped picked, and which one is mine, eh?

somebody put me together....

Meanwhile, in general falling apart news.... following on from my broken finger, broken toe, the torn ligaments in my ankle, the cracked rib, the slowly-but-noticeably stiffening knee joints, the spasming muscles in my back and the general, all pervasive feeling of weariness, it appears that I might have fractured my elbow.

The little whack I gave it seemed so innocuous at the time, but three weeks later and the doctor tells me that I need to go and get an x-ray. Not that there's anything they can do if it is fractured, you understand, but at least we'll know one way or the other, eh? What next for the miracle of modern medical science?

I'm starting to think that I've reached the age where my body is trying to tell me something.

I'm ignoring it.

I'm sure that ageing is nothing that plenty of drugs and a decent plastic surgeon can't fix.

man you've been a naughty boy, you let your face grow long...

I don't tend to shave over the weekend. As far as I'm concerned, shaving is a chore that is done under some duress ever weekday morning in the shower. It certainly isn't something that I derive any great pleasure from, although as I have very little desire to grow a beard, I ultimately don't have much choice. Given the choice, I would always opt to have a couple of day's worth of stubble. I think it looks better, and it also means I do a whole lot less shaving. I choose to shave every day of the working week, but I'm blowed if I'm going to shave in my leisure time. As a result, by Sunday evening, I tend to look somewhat hairier than usual.

I was putting a contact lens in on Sunday morning, and thus rather closer to the bathroom mirror than usual, when I noticed something on my chin. At first I thought it was a bit of fluff or a feather from my pillow. Closer inspection, however, revealed that I was looking at a little crop of grey stubble.

Once I was sure what it was, I was a touch surprised to find out that I was thrilled. I had grey hair in my stubble! If I was to grow a beard, it would have a grey flash and everything! I've no idea why, but that thought sounded kind of cool.

Mind you, in the interests of full disclosure, I feel it's only appropriate to confess at this time that if I was to grow a beard, then it would not be an entirely salt-and-pepper style affair, a Sean Connery or a George Clooney. No. Rather, the grey flashes on my chin would be competing for attention with the rather more prominent and eye-catching ginger flashes in my beard. Frankly that's not a look that I aspire to.



So I won't be growing a beard any time soon.

No sir. No beard today.

like a coin that won't get tossed....

Although I'm only thirty-four years old, some days I feel as old as the hills. I went for a run during my lunchbreak yesterday, and it was fantastic. I was feeling a little bit tired from a game of football the night before and from my mandatory 3 times a week anti-WT upper body strengthening exercises, but within minutes of getting out of the door, it was obvious that this was going to be one of those rare occasions where a run feels great. Usually they just feel like a bit of a slog, a means to an end, but yesterday was great. It was a beautiful day, not too hot and not too cold, with just enough sun and barely a breath of wind. It felt as though spring was really just around the corner, and I found an unexpected bounce creep into my stride as I ran down by the river. It was great.

This morning though, I felt sore. The still-damaged ligaments in my ankle were stiff, my knees were a bit sore and my legs appeared to have seized up. I used to embrace a bit of after-exercise muscle pain as a welcome sign that I must have been working hard enough. Now though, it just feels like a window into my old age. Not that it's enough to stop me exercising so obsessively, mind you, and I played 90 minutes of football this evening. I feel worse doing nothing at all than I do flogging myself into the ground, I know that much. The physical discomfort is a whole lot easier to deal with than the psychological discomfort I inflict upon myself when I don't exercise. Ask me again when I'm a bit older though, eh?

I've been getting used to what cosmetics companies call "the visible signs of ageing" for some time now. I first noticed that I was losing my hair when I was in my middle-twenties, and I've been going grey since not very long after that. I imagine that the wrinkles around my eyes are coming along nicely too, although I've never really studied them with any great interest.... besides, what exactly am I going to do about it? I'm not bothered by wrinkles, so I'm not about to start using Protect & Perfect, nor am I likely to start having hair replacement therapy or get a weave done any time soon. I don't think I'm vain enough. It's not that I'm claiming I have no vanity, because I do, it's just that I'm not vain enough about my appearance to be interested in doing anything much about it. Grey hair simply doesn't bother me.

Well, I say that..... but in the last couple of years I have started to notice the odd grey hair appearing in locations. You know....other than on my head. On the whole, I can ignore them. For starters, I'm not an especially hairy man, and they're still pretty isolated, in the main, and clearly nothing very much to worry about. Yes, even down there. For some reason though, I seem utterly unable to tolerate grey hairs appearing on my chest. I simply can't stand the sight of them. No matter how much I try to leave them be, once I have spotted one of these interlopers, I have to pull the little bastard out. I'm aware that this is neither rational nor sustainable in the long run. As time goes on, there are only going to be more greys appearing, and before long I know that they will have a clear numerical superiority. Am I going to persist with my zero tolerance policy to its logical conclusion, or am I just going to get over it and learn to live and let live?

Who knows? For now I think I'll take it one day - and one hair - at a time.

It's just not logical. Why just the chest? Why care here but nowhere else? Call yourself clever do you brain? Well where's the consistency? Tell me that.

So yeah. I'm maybe a bit vain. Just in a slightly offbeat way. I may be ageing, but boy, do I take pride in the consistent colour of my chest hair.

Come to think of it, I'm not overfond of stray, Denis Healey-like eyebrow hairs either.

Especially not the ginger ones.

sick-a-sick'n'tired of being sick and tired

I'm almost never ill. Well, I say that, but what I actually mean is that I am very rarely struck down by any of those vicious little bugs that sweep their way across the country every few months. Oh sure, from time to time I'll wake up with a slightly sore throat or perhaps a bit of a runny nose, but they never seem to last all that long and in the main I seem to get away with it. A touch smugly, I like to put this down to a happy combination of the vast quantities of fruit and vegetables that I eat every day and all of the exercise that I get. I fondly imagine that this lifestyle gives me some kind of immunity to the types of passing nasty that lesser immune systems are unable to fend of.

Well, maybe there's some truth in that, but I'm certainly not feeling the usual sense of smug self-satisfaction this year. There's a cold going round, you see, but this time I've caught it. Worse still - not only have I finally succombed, but it has knocked me for six. Other people seem to have had this cold and recovered in a couple of days, but I've had it now for something like ten days and at the moment it's showing little sign of shifting any time soon.

I'm not a great believer in the phenomenon of "Man Flu", where the version of a cold suffered by the male of the species seems to be so much more severe than the one suffered by the females. Oh no, this is definitely only a cold, and I know full well that a cold is nothing much to grumble about in the grand scheme of things. After all, I don't really feel all that dreadful and I have been dragging myself into work as usual every day and being just as (un)productive as I always am.

It grinds you down though, doesn't it? All those slightly wishy-washy symptoms are nothing much on their own, but together they gang up with each other and make it their business to make you feel decidedly iffy. Not ill. Ill is serious. Just iffy.

First it's the slightly sore throat. Then the blocked nose that becomes a neverending river of mucous. Then it descends into the lungs, becoming a nasty, rattly cough that somehow never quite rattles anything loose. Then the voice goes hoarse. Then the nose goes all red and sore because those balsam soaked tissues are surprisingly coarse. The congestion makes sleep difficult, and napping whilst propped up on several pillows is no real subsitute for proper rest. Breathing through the mouth irritates the throat and sleep is further chased away by incessant coughing and blowing. All that stupid, ineffective cough linctus and those all those lozenges fur the tongue and loosen the gums. Prolonged coughing sooner or later ruptures something important on the inside that makes coughing even more of a trial than it was before. The Doctor says there's no infection, that all those remedies are of no real use and that it will work its way out in its own time.... but when? when?

Still, mustn't grumble, eh? It's only a cold and far Worse things happen at sea.

Patience and fortitude, that's what's required. Patience and fortitude.

Actually, patience and fortitude haven't really worked for me thus far, and although it's still only a cold, I fear I may be in danger of losing my sense of perspective. So tonight, instead of patience and fortitude (and a certain amount of grumpiness), I think I might try alcohol instead and I'm off to the pub.

Can't hurt, eh?

is that the kind of thing that you think you might be into?

Well, it's been a great day for me so far. I can trace my woes back to that innocent moment in last night's game of football when I put my foot down to block a shot. Unfortunately for me, instead of putting it down between the ball and the goal, I actually put it down resting against the side of the ball just as my opponent kicked it. The result was that the power of the shot passed straight through the ball and into my ankle. I hopped around for a bit, thought idly that I'm supposed to be going skiing in January, went in goal for a bit and then played the rest of the match trying to "run it off". I iced it when I got home, but it basically felt alright.

Sadly, when I woke up this morning, I could hardly walk. My lovely neighbour Hen was kind enough to drive me to the doctor who took one look and referred me for an x-ray at the hospital. At the hospital, I was informed (after the x-ray) that I would get the results from my doctor in the next seven to ten days. Pardon? Now, so far today, all of the healthcare attention I have received today has been free at the point of access, which is the brilliant part about the National Health Service, but I can't walk, so a ten day wait isn't going to be much good to me. Right. Hm. You'd better go to Accident & Emergency then. More waiting. It's not broken. Good news. Apparently I've torn a ligament, most likely the anterior talofibular ligament. That all sounds very serious, but I think the nurse was being nice to me and tarting it up a bit. If you call it by its more common name, it's a sprained ankle. Not such a big deal. The treatment? Ice it up baby, rest it up and don't do much on it for a few days, perhaps a week or two... maybe even three months. Skiing should be alright, but odds on when I can get back out running? I'm going to target next Saturday and see how I go. A week without exercise? I think it will be the death of me.

I'm also supposed to be day-tripping to London tomorrow for some shopping. I'm planning on going, unless something equally serious like a hang nail or a particularly painful spot persuade me I should just stay in bed....

Anyway. To more important matters: this week's Guest Editor has graced this spot with his tuneless dirges twice already, but I just can't get enough of him. Fresh off the back from the qualified success of his shuffleathon disc.... ladies and gentleworms, without further ado it is my great pleasure to introduce for your earworming pleasure.....

Earworms of the Week - Guest Editor #74 - Ben

My third bite at the Earworms cherry. Thanks for inviting me back, Toni – very kind of you, given that what usually happens is I turn up, wax lyrical about some bands most of your readers have never heard of, drink all your wine, steal all your Twiglets and make off into the night…

10. ‘Bend Over Beethoven’ – !!!

Not happy with choosing a name that makes their albums harder to find in your local record shop than Osama Bin Laden (if that makes sense – I’m not suggesting that the Oxford branch of HMV is the nerve centre of Al-Qaeda’s operations), mischievous gibbons !!! – the commonly agreed pronunciation is “Chk Chk Chk” for ease – here shamelessly steal part of the bassline from The Killers’ ‘Jenny Was A Friend Of Mine’ and the “Don’t stop!” mantra from Junior Senior’s genius pop hit ‘Move Your Feet’ for an eight-minute-long punk-funk odyssey that’ll have you shaking parts of your body you didn’t know you had. Note: I do not condone the necrophilic sodomising of German composers.

9. ‘Sweet Love For Planet Earth’ – Fuck Buttons

Aww! Fuck Buttons – don’t they just sound cute? Don’t you just want to pinch their cheeks and ruffle their hair? And ‘Sweet Love For Planet Earth’ certainly starts off cute – but then the celestial twinkling of the keyboards is buried beneath an avalanche of noise. Truly the loudest thing I’ve ever heard live. I still have no idea how it didn’t blow out the glass wall of the room they were playing in. What’s that? It’s not music? Sorry, I can’t quite hear you…

8. ‘Blue Line Swinger’ – Yo La Tengo

Last time round I’d not long been blown away by my first experience of Yo La Tengo live, but it wasn’t until a couple of months ago that I finally got round to investing in Electr-O-Pura, the 1995 album thought by many to be their best. ‘Blue Line Swinger’ is the luxuriant, sprawling wig-out that brings the record to a close – and it was also the song loudly requested by Tom of Los Campesinos! (there, you knew I couldn’t get through without at least one nod in their direction) at the Cardiff gig immediately after they’d played the equally lengthy and blissfully noisy ‘I Heard You Looking’. Ira Kaplan’s response? “Are you fucking insane?!”

7. ‘Paradise City’ – Guns ‘N’ Roses

Up until last weekend, I’d never seen anyone attempt to breakdance to ‘Paradise City’. That said, it wasn’t really recognisable as such – more like a couple of fully-grown men rolling around on their backs on the floor like oversized, disoriented, very drunk beetles. Seasoned Rock City goers are used to that kind of behaviour, though, so no one batted an eyelid.

6. ‘Red Weather’ – The Duke Spirit

Everyone always bangs on about “that difficult second album”, but an attendant problem is that difficult second set-list. When everything has been pretty much set in stone for maximum tried-and-tested impact, how exactly do you then go about rearranging it, dropping some songs so others can be inserted, rejigging the running order? It’s a problem scuzz-fiends The Duke Spirit are currently grappling with. When they played in Oxford on Monday, traditional set-closer ‘Red Weather’ found itself usurped – but, as if taking on a life beyond the control of those busy playing it, nevertheless asserted itself as the rightful monarch, showing up the songs that followed as mere pretenders to the throne.

5. ‘Mason City’ – The Fiery Furnaces

Last Friday night, I saw The Fiery Furnaces put being rudely snubbed by Birmingham behind them and set about showcasing their brand new album. Over the course of an hour and a half they probably played in the region of fifteen or twenty songs, some mashed up and spliced together. At no point, though, did they play ‘Mason City’. So how on earth did I end up earworming it for days afterwards? These things move in mysterious ways…

4. ‘Johnny Cash’ – Sons & Daughters

Judging by their gig at the same venue a week and a half earlier, Sons & Daughters are going the same way as The Duke Spirit – more “streamlined” and less “rompy”, as the editorial team of Plan B magazine put it in their recent review of new single ‘Gilt Complex’. For all the charms of the new material, with its 60s pop influences, debut single ‘Johnny Cash’ was what people really wanted to hear: the sound of a bar brawl between pissed-up Midwest hillbillies and Glaswegian crackhead punks. On this occasion, they slowed its rambunctious broken-bottle-to-the-neck thrust to slip briefly into ‘I Wanna Be Your Dog’ – an unexpected treat.

3. ‘If You’re Into It’ – Flight Of The Conchords

I’m hardly watching any TV these days, but if I was I’d be taking in a lot more of these two. ‘If You’re Into It’ is a romantic duet / serenade of sorts – with the emphasis on the “of sorts”…

2. ‘Chinese Rocks’ – Johnny Thunders & The Heartbreakers

The DJ at the Duke Spirit gig on Monday seemed to have a CD to play between sets which was comprised of a grand total of five songs. One was Dylan’s ‘Highway 61 Revisited’, another was ‘Doggie Where’s Your Bone’ by The Eagles Of Death Metal – and a third was this gem. Written by Dee Dee Ramone and then-Heartbreaker Richard Hell but made famous by ex-New York Doll Johnny Thunders (much to Dee Dee and Hell’s annoyance), in my book it’s as compelling a piece of evidence as there is for American punk’s superiority over its transatlantic cousin. It’s very openly about smack, of course (that was the reason The Ramones decided not to record it themselves), and is also notable for being one of only two songs I can think of that refers to things being “in hock”. And the other is?

1.‘Sweet Girl’ – Ringo Deathstarr

In many ways youthful Texan quartet Ringo Deathstarr (see what they’ve done there?) are entirely redundant now that both The Jesus & Mary Chain and My Bloody Valentine have exhumed themselves. But come now, don’t be so curmudgeonly – you can never have too much of a good thing. Especially when that good thing is screamingly loud blitzkrieg pop and laser-guided shoegazery melodies, brought to British ears by Simon of Spoilt Victorian Child. (There’s no YouTube footage but you can hear snippets of ‘Some Kind Of Sad’ here and ‘Swirly’ here.)

Thanks again for having me back Toni.

---

It's always a pleasure Ben.... especially when I think you may have dropped in a reference to the mighty Jovi in there somewhere. Am I right? Nice. You've also made me think that I haven't been clubbing at Rock City for a long, long time....and I knew there was a reason why. Anyway, thanks for playing. Oh, and you know I was joking about the whole dirge thing, right? Right?

Next week: we'll see.

Have a good weekend y'all.

Incidentally, in spite of the best efforts of my ankle to block the shot.... it went in. Pah.

[Previous Guest Editors: Flash, The Urban Fox, Lord Bargain, Retro-Boy, Statue John, Ben, OLS, Ka, Jenni, Aravis, Yoko, Bee, Charlie, Tom, Di, Spin, The Ultimate Olympian, Damo, Mike, RedOne, The NumNum, Leah, Le Moine Perdu, clm, Michael, Hyde, Adem, Alecya, bytheseashore, adamant, Earworms of the Year 2005, Delrico Bandito, Graham, Lithaborn, Phil, Mark II, Stef, Kaptain Kobold, bedshaped, I have ordinary addictions, TheCatGirlSpeaks, Lord B rides again, Tina, Charlie II, Cody Bones, Poll Star, Jenni II, Martin, Del II, The Eye in the Sky, RussL, Lizzy's Hoax, Ben II, Earworms of the Year 2006, Sarah, Flash II, Erika, Hen, Pynchon, Troubled Diva, Graham II, Cat II, Statue John II, Sweeping the Nation, Aravis II, Olympian II, C, Planet-Me, Mike, Michael II, Eye in the Sky II, Charlie III, The Great Grape Ape, asta]

making flippy floppy

I woke up this morning in the grey pre-dawn to discover that my right arm had gone completely dead. It wasn't just numb: I couldn't feel it at all; I had absolutely no muscle control over it; it just flopped limply by my side as though it was an artificial limb made of rags.

I suppose I must have slept in a funny position that cut-off the blood circulation to my arm, but my sleep-addled mind was not able to grasp this concept. I sat on the edge of the bed for a few minutes, picking up my arm with my left hand, lifting it and dropping it, watching it fall back to my side and feeling a growing sense of confusion and fear that my dominant arm was utterly paralysed.

After a little while, I was able to gather myself together enough to use my left hand to massage some life back into my shoulder and down my arm, and after a few minutes, normal service was resumed.

For a confusing five minutes though, let me tell you, I was a little scared.

such a royal pain in the neck....

I had a lunchtime team meeting yesterday. It wasn't terribly arduous, but I was sitting slightly to one side of the flip-chart we were using, and by the end of the 90 minute session, I had a bit of a twinge in my neck. It didn't seem too bad or anything much to worry about, but about an hour later my neck had completely seized up.

I popped a couple of Nurofen and hoped it would go away, but it worried me for one very simple reason: it was a pain like this, in exactly the same spot that signalled the development of a lesion on my cervical spinal cord and the start of the pins and needles, loss of sensation and ultimately the muscle wastage that I know at the Weirdy Tingles (although my neurologist prefers to call it something else).

My last MRI scan was back in February and revealed that there had been "diffuse changes" in the lesion on my neck, meaning it had begun to dissipate. The damage to the sheath around my spinal cord has been done and will never fully heal, and nerve signals down my body will always be disrupted to some degree, but crucially no new lesions had appeared, and so I do not have MS - at least, not yet. Clearly this was good news.

I had just come through a bit of a bad patch when I was scanned, but since then I have had a pretty good run and haven't been troubled by my symptoms too much, touch wood. Sure the numbness and pins & needles are all still there, but I've been religiously doing my exercises to keep my upper body muscles from wasting, and I have generally been able to get on with my life as normal.

Some mornings I wake up with a slightly stiff neck, but I've always seen this as a gentle reminder of the mark that has been left on my spinal cord and I try not to let it bother me.

Yesterday was different though. The pain was in exactly the same place - on the left hand side of my neck and slightly behind the line of my shoulder - but this time it was much worse and much more persistent. By mid-afternoon I was in quite a lot of discomfort and wondering whether I should go and see a doctor.

In the end, I decided to wait, and although I woke up several times during the night, I chewed my way though some more ibuprofen, and although my neck is still stiff and sore, it feels now as though the worst is over.

The thing is though, when this first happened to me back in 2005, it was only the beginning. I went to the doctor with a stiff neck some months before I started to experience any neurological symptoms. I'm trying not to worry, but let's hope that this time it's just a sore neck, eh?

---

Speaking of doctors, I now have all of the information that I need to decide if I want to take the plunge and get phakic intraocular lenses surgically inserted into my eyes to correct my myopia. I've done the reading. I've consulted the best surgeon I could find and he thought I was a good candidate. I know the risks and the odds. I want to do it.... and yet somehow I've sat on this information for the best part of the last two months and I still haven't pulled the trigger. I'm not sure what I'm waiting for. It's a leap of faith; a step onto an invisible bridge... only I don't think Indiana Jones is in front of me with a handful of pebbles to show me the way on this one.

and it burns, burns, burns....

I nearly washed my wedding ring down a sink last week.

Anyone who has seen the pictures of me at the wedding struggling to force that same ring over the broken knuckle on my ring-finger will realise just what this means: it means that after something like 4 months since that fateful game of basketball, the swelling in my joint is finally going down. Mind you, I didn't have much time to celebrate this fact as the sinks at work don't have a grill over the plugholes (no, I don't know either), so I had to act pretty fast to avoid the need to go and fetch a plumber.

Later on that same day, I was shaking my hands after washing them, and the ring flew off my finger, requiring some quick reactions to catch it before it sailed across the room.

Clearly time for an adjustment then.

This is actually a visit I have been putting off for a while. I have been doing this partly because I know that the swelling in my knuckle will go down gradually, and I didn't want to get the ring adjusted once, only to have to take it back a month or so later. If I'm totally honest though, the delay was also equally due to the fact that I am mental: I had become fascinated by the way that my once shiny and new ring was wearing... to the extent that I was almost worried about getting it back from the jeweler, all perfect again, only to have to go through the pain of watching that perfection disappear, one scratch at a time.

Yes, I realise that this is irrational.

Yes, I realise that it is entirely inevitable that something I wear on my finger is going to get banged and scraped and a little bit bashed (which is one of the reasons I opted for a platinum ring in the first place, as it's harder than gold).

Yes, I realise that all I have to do is to get the ring polished once in a while - which if free, by the way - and it would all be as good as new again.

I know all of this, and yet it was still virtually inevitable that I was going to fret about this -- anyone who knows what I am like with my glasses (amongst other things) would have been able to predict that. And I did fret, right from the first moment that I looked at the ring in its box, before I had even put the damn thing on, and saw some tiny surface scratches caused by the initial polishing. Once I started wearing the ring, there was no holding me back. I think I'm looking at my ring in almost every single one of those photos.

Perhaps "fret" is too strong a word. I think "mesmerised" might be better. I simply found it fascinating. I'd never worn a ring before, so I was acutely conscious of it on my finger and of every knock that it took in the course of a normal day. I just wasn't able to equate the things that I did with the marks that were appearing on my ring.

Of course, after a while I started to get used to wearing it, and I stopped looking at it quite as often. I still looked, naturally, but I think that the ring stopped looking scratched (bad) as much as having character (good). So, not only was I now getting reconciled to this, but I was even tentatively starting to like the way it looked.

And then I got the ring re-sized (it was made 4 sizes smaller) and it came back all shiny again, and I was facing up to the prospect of scuffing it up all over again.

As it happens, I haven't really had any time to worry about that as something else has come up.... quite literally. It's been quite hot here over the last few days, and the higher temperatures coupled with the process in the jewelers of trying on sample rings for size and taking them off again, putting my own ring on as it was being resized and taking it off again... all of this has combined to irritate the joint in my finger to such an extent that it has swollen up again. Not so much that the ring was compressing my finger, but enough that I couldn't get it on and off without a struggle. The best thing would therefore be to leave it well alone, but as my finger continued to swell, I couldn't stop myself trying to see if I could still get the ring off, irritating the joint more and more each time I tried.

In the end, I have had to take the thing off entirely and will have to wait a few days to see if the joint goes down again (now the ring is smaller, it no longer fits on the finger of my right hand either).

And you know what else?

I was just putting the ring back in its box, when I noticed a mark......

Gah!

"I'm just a boy with a new haircut"

"Baldness" - taken at Glastonbury and courtesy of Statue John

I know this is a statement of the bleeding obvious, but I'm bald. Well, balding anyway.

A fellow slaphead at work was telling me the other day how he forgot to take a hat with him to the Cambridge Folk Festival and as a result had burned the top of his head. I sympathised with him. I've been there. Although I might like to think that my baldness is restricted to a forehead that's getting ever bigger, the truth is that my once luxuriant and shaggy mane of curls is getting decidedly thin on top too. Luckily I've worn my hair short for years, so it's not much bother keeping it clippered and thus avoid any unfortunate stacking of thicker hair against thinner hair. In the last ten years I've moved from a grade four to a grade three to a grade two. Nowadays I ask the barber for a one-and-a-half on top and a one around the edges. I'm under no illusions that this progression is going to inevitably lead me at some point to a completely shaved head.

You know what? It really doesn't bother me.

Someone first pointed out to me that I might be losing my hair back in 1994. I was in the middle of my term in Venice, and instead of going out and looking for a hairdresser, I let my friend Mark cut my hair. He introduced me to Scott Walker, so when he offered, how could I not entrust him with my hair? When he had finished, I looked in the mirror and it seemed as though I had a little bald patch on either side at the front of my head. I accused him of botching the job. He accused me of going bald. We laughed. I forgot about it. I was twenty years old and I had no idea that it was going to be all downhill from there.

Has it affected my life? Who knows, but I shouldn't think it's made much of a difference except that I now own a lot of hats. At twenty and long out of school, I was old enough not to be teased by anyone about my hair-loss. I got my first serious girlfriend shortly afterwards, so I've never associated lack of hair with a lack of success with women (just my general ineptitude).... so apart from not getting through very much shampoo and no longer owning a hairbrush, it doesn't really worry me. In fact, I find the whole process fascinating, as I do watching the hair that remains turn grey....

What can you do? And no, I'm not interested in taking any drugs to make my hair grow back, thanks very much (and especially not when one of the side-effects can be a loss of libido. What kind of a trade-off is that? Hair for sex? No thanks.). Nor am I interested in dyeing my hair. I don't judge those who do, but I've simply never felt the need.

Still, at least I now definitively know the answer to a question that has been vaguely troubling me for the best part of the last twenty-five years: when I was seven years old, I had a great big mop of hair, and I used to damp it down in the morning with cold water before brushing it and heading off to breakfast. I was warned that if I continued to do this, I was certain to go bald. Clearly this was nonsense. Even at that tender age I had a working grasp of simple genetics: my dad and both of my grandfathers had full heads of hair, so how likely was it really that I would go bald, eh? I laughed in the face of my potential baldness and continued damping down my hair every morning, shrugging my shoulders and saying that if and when I did go bald, I'd simply have to put it down to the damping.... but not before.

Well, now we know.

Don't do it kids.

dem bones, dem bones...

-
I spent an interesting couple of hours at the fracture clinic in the hospital this morning. I had a 09:30 appointment, and because QMC is something of a labyrinth, I turned up nice and early to leave plenty of time for getting lost. I've been in here more often than I would like in the last few months, and I know from bitter experience that it is a deeply confusing building, made worse by the fact that it's built into a hill, and what looks like ground level on one side is the first floor on the other side. When I was looking for the exit after seeing my neurologist a few months ago, I was stopped by some medical students and asked if I knew the way to the dissection room. Er, no. Thank God. Don't you?

I parked my car in the multi-storey and then wandered around the edge of the building to the main reception. I once made the mistake of taking a short cut through the side entrance opposite the car park and I then spent about half an hour trying to find reception, never mind finding my original destination. It's that kind of a hospital. After a bit of fruitless wandering and staring hopelessly at the map, I asked for directions and was sent down some stairs, round a few corners and then into a clinic that was directly opposite the car park. Hey ho.

I checked in at the clinic's reception and took my seat in the waiting room. Here I was a bit confused by a sign on the wall: "Patients are seen in appointment order but are not necessarily called in that order". I wasn't quite sure what they were driving at. I didn't know anyone else's appointment time, I only knew my own. People don't arrive neatly in appointment order. Some people arrive early, some people arrive late. Anyway, after about 20 minutes, it became a bit clearer when I was summoned through to the nurses' station and then promptly dumped in a secondary waiting room. Another 30 minutes passed before I was called up and taken to a cubicle and left for another 10 minutes to contemplate my x-rays on the wall. I don't know what time the clinic started, but they were already running an hour late by 10:30... although to be fair, I hope that all the doctors were working on really serious cases instead. I'd hate to think that NHS waiting time statistics meant that people like me get seen instead of a real emergency. They probably do though, don't they?

Anyway.

Soon enough, a consultant breezed in and kept me for about 3 minutes before very pleasantly discharging me. The long and the short of it is that my finger is broken and I have damaged the capsule surrounding the joint. Apparently I am lucky that I appear to have a full range of movement and that my finger is still relatively straight, but the joint will be swollen and painful for some time - perhaps as long as 2 years. There's nothing much else that they can do. Thanks for coming in, etc.

Hey ho. Now I know, eh?

Two years!

I knew that basketball was a stupid bloody game.

tired of waiting for you....

I had my last set of MRI scans on 3rd April. The way the private healthcare system works over here (it’s a long story, but basically my health cover is -- more or less -- paid for by my work) is that I report to the hospital for my scans, but then I am forced to wait whilst they send my scans on to my consultant neurologist. My neurologist then looks at the scans and lets me know what’s going on and what he plans to do about it.

I’ve recently changed neurologists and so I had no real idea how long this process would take. I was keen to know what was going on, of course, but I also knew that I was just going to have to be patient. It’s hard knowing that the guys operating the scanner have been looking at the inside of my head and drawing their own initial conclusions as I lay there, knowing that I was possibly some weeks from hearing for myself what was going on in Brian. The last time I had some MRI scans done, in August 2005, it took a little over a week before my consultant gave me a ring to let me know what he was thinking. That week’s wait was especially difficult as the whole thing was new to me, and I didn’t yet have any real idea what was wrong with me.

It was a worrying time.

In some ways, I don’t feel as though I’m much better off now. I know that I have Transverse Myelitis, and I know that I have one big lesion on my cervical spinal cord that was caused a loss of power and nerve sensation throughout my body, and a couple of indistinct markers in my brian that might or might not be lesions. What I don’t know is if this situation has changed in the last 20 months, or if I have developed any new lesions and if this would affect both my diagnosis and my prognosis. Another lesion (or sclerosis) would by definition mean that I would have Multiple Sclerosis.

You can see why I wanted to know if anything had changed.

On 24th April, three weeks after the scans were done, my health insurance company wrote to me confirming that they had paid the £900 charge from the hospital for that scan on 24th April. Still no word from my neurologist. I chased his office. Yes, he had been away over Easter but he would look at them very soon and get back to me. Another week went by with nothing. I chased again. Oh, apparently my neurologist was now on a conference in Boston and because he’s a professor at a teaching hospital, he was involved in the whole conference and not just a couple of sessions. Apparently he would need to be there for the full ten days. I wasn’t very happy, but what could I do? He was apparently back on Tuesday last week and his secretary assured me that my scans were on the top of his desk. When I had nothing in the post this morning, I chased again. Apparently my letter was posted to me this morning. There have been no changes and he doesn’t need to see me.

And that’s it.

Is it just me, or should I be expecting more than this? Now, don’t get me wrong. Whilst it might be slightly frustrating news, it’s also probably the best news that I could have got. I have not got any worse. My condition has not “developed”. That’s great. What has annoyed me is quite how long it has taken for him to get round to telling me this. I understand that he is one of the leading experts in neurology in the country. I understand that he heads up a well-renowned research department. I get that he is a teaching professor. He’s busy. I get that.

At what point did he forget that I’m the patient here? That I might have needs and worries? That I might be looking to him to help me understand what has been happening to my body? As my doctor I think we have a contract of trust, and I think he has an obligation to me. Actually, bollocks to all that: he took me on as a private patient. He’s been charging me for his bloody time. I think that means he is doubly obligated to me.

*deep breath*

Still. I know now, eh? Except I still don't know really, and I’m still playing the waiting game.

--

In other news, I’m off to the fracture clinic to have my broken ring finger examined on Wednesday. The good news is that we picked up the rings on Saturday, and mine fits on my right hand. No need for the Frodo Baggins chain then…

I’m almost disappointed by that. I feel as though some comic possibilities have been lost.

gonna end up a big old pile of them bones....

How many times in your life will you specifically need the third finger on your left hand? In conjunction with the other digits, I suppose it's useful enough, but you'd imagine that - at a pinch, and if you really had to - you could manage without it.....

....unless you were getting married in the next few weeks.

Any other time in my life, damaging your ring finger would be annoying and perhaps a touch inconvenient, but it would be something that could be shrugged off and quickly forgotten about. This is more or less exactly what I did in 1991 when I dislocated this finger at the second joint whilst playing rugby. It hurt. It swelled up. I had to strap it up for a few weeks. The joint warped a bit. That was about it. No big deal.

Fast forward 15 years, and I pinged the same joint whilst playing basketball with the Ultimate Olympian at the very end of March. I had a small sense of deja-vu as the joint swelled up and I had to strap my poor finger up, but I wasn't especially worried about it.

Fast forward a month, and the bruising had gone down but the joint itself remained painful and swollen, and - with the benefit of 20:20 hindsight - perhaps I can now admit that taking that stint in goal at football a couple of weeks ago wasn't the smartest of ideas.... I'm rubbish in goals on the whole, but on this occasion I was pulling off some very unlikely reflex saves, mainly with my left hand. I initially felt pretty pleased with myself, but by the end of the game, it was also fairly clear that I was finally going to have to go to the doctor to get this damn finger checked out.

I went last Tuesday and the doctor immediately sent me off for an X-ray and told me to immobilise the finger by strapping it to my middle finger.

I got the x-ray results today.

I've broken my finger.

I don't know yet if it's a clean fracture or if a splinter of bone has broken off and gone through the joint... but 5 or 6 weeks after the original injury, it should have mostly cleared up by now, and obviously it hasn't. I may yet have to take the Frodo Baggins approach and wear the Ring of Power on a chain round my neck for a bit before I can cast it into Mount Doom wear it on my finger.

Ooops.