Let's jump back on the band wagon...

After seeing some of my friends are regularly keeping blogs I feel it is time to resurrect my old blog. As you can see (if you are bored enough to look at my old posts) that I haven't written on here in almost three years so probably about time to update things.

Now I think one of the reasons why I never kept up to date with this blog is because I could never think of anything interesting enough to write about...either that or I am just very very lazy, probably a combination of the two to be honest. But now I will change one of those things...laziness is out of the window and it is time to bore you fine people of the internet reading right now with uninteresting nonsense that spouts from my merry mind once again.

What am I going to write about I hear you ask? I have absolutely no blithering idea and am going to keep writing until something comes to mind..................................(too many dots?)..................(nah didn't think so either)....................

Oh I know what I can talk to you merry people about is what I first created this blog to do in the first place...*cue dramatic news music* (Please feel free to hum the music out loud, it might make the next bit more fun) it's time to find out what's been happening with my left knee (also read the last part with a bit of a rhythm as I am in my head, it definitely makes it more interesting, you could even try and combine it the dramatic news music going on in your head as well). Now we've had a little musical/rhythmical interlude I can delay the information no longer. Oh, if you are unsure as to what happened to my knee in the first place then you'll have to go back to the start of my posts, there is quite a detailed and graphic description. *Disclaimer* The description may only seem graphic to me because I can remember it happening so please don't come crying to me when you don't find it at all graphic in the slightest. There we go, I think I successfully saved myself a big law suit. Where was I? Ahh yes, the dramatic news music...well my left knee has unfortunately had to be removed and replaced with a small hinge that only works on a semi-regular basis.

Is that gasps of shock I hear from you? Especially those of you who have known me for a good few years and never knew this about me...well that is probably because it was a bald faced lie. I have no semi-regularly working hinge for a knee, I just have a normal boring semi-regularly working knee that is still in recovery because I was too lazy to fully rebuild the muscles around it. My own fault so now I have to deal with a knee that clicks incessantly and that can't be in the same position for too long without it ceasing up and becoming rather painful. I think I would prefer to have the small hinge if I'm being honest...it would probably creak less.

I think that's about as much boredom I can inflict on you for one evening but I will try my hardest to try and bore you on a more regular basis than once every three years but I can't promise anything.


(Oh and you can stop humming your dramatic news music if any of you are hardcore enough to still be humming it (or did it in the first place))

Catch up

Well it's been a while since my last post, so there is quite to fill you in on. I have now finished all of my work for the first year of university so i now have a very long summer ahead. Which is going to a lot of fun. I am planning to work quite a lot and play lots of golf. I am also going to Ibiza for a week in June which will be awesome!!

As regards to my knee progress, i haven't been to the hospital for a while and my knee hasn't hurt for a long time which is great. However i haven't been to the gym for a long time so i need to go back as i am starting to feel my fitness wain slightly.

In slightly more immediate news i did the absolutely ridiculously stupid thing of burning all of my fingers on my right hand so its vitally good that i have finished all of my work as it has taken me about 45 minutes just to write this with all the trips to get new water etc. However i'm sure they will be fine.

Until the next time and i'll try not to leave it as long before i update you again.

It wasn't that hard...

So during the last entry i was a bit suspicious about going into the advanced class at the hospital as they made it sound very hard. However when i got there i found that it was just like the intermediate class but they just made you do the stuff for longer and you were expected to do more. However it is still dependant on how much you want to do and i saw it as an opportunity to push myself as hard as i could. And i felt really good when i was leaving knowing that i had pushed myself and my knee had survived it. Another plus that happened in the last two weeks since i last posted on here was i have been working out at the gym trying to strengthen my knee and i have been going on the rowing machine quite a lot. I have been trying to see how quickly i can row 2000 metres just out of interest and the last time i went, i knocked 30 seconds off my previous best and felt better after it then i did when i set my last time which was a positive. So now my best time is 8:59.07 which will be exceedingly hard to beat but with my knee getting stronger and stronger there is every hope that i will beat it.

My left knee and me

Right ok this is the main reason why i set this blog up (apart from being forced to by creative writing) to keep track of the progress of my knee.

Ill set the scene...about two years ago now i was playing rugby; i was stood at the back of a ruck and a prop of about 18 stone started to fall over; before i knew what was happening he had fallen on my left knee and it bent the wrong way so to speak. This is how i found out that i had hyper-extendable limbs, although i would much rather find out through a less painful method. So there i was writhing around in agony clutching my left knee. The game stops and i am carried back off to the changing rooms so i am out of the way...there was still a game to finish.

After the match had finished and everyone had had something to eat we headed off home. The next day i went to Addenbrookes hospital as they have a specialist sports injury clinic. They told me i had done either some ligament or cartilidge damage...oh bugger!

I knew that ligament damage wouldn't be good mainly from the old days when i used to play Premier manager and one of the players would get injured, if it was a cruciate ligament then they were out for the season. It would always happen to the best player...normally Shearer as i was usually Newcastle. Anyway i have side tracked...after they told me about the damage they put me on a physio therapy regime and i had to return to Addenbrookes every week for my physio sessions.


6 weeks of physio therapy and my knee is back to full fitness once again (well truthfully it wasnt but if i didnt say it was good enough they wouldnt let me ski, probably a highly stupid decision but i enjoyed skiing so much that it was worth the risk). I went skiing and my knee seemed to cope ok and i thought that my injury was all behind me.

Seeing as it had coped to well with skiing i didnt give it another thought and carried on as i had before the injury and didnt really compensate for it or carry on with the exercises...a very stupid decision. It was mid summer last year about 15 months after i first did the injury and i was driving to my nan's house. It was fine while i was driving but when i stopped and got out of the car my knee was hurting once again. This wasn't good, it was supposed to be better again...but i didnt let it stop me doing anything and i didnt try and do any exercises...another stupid decision...i am full of these concerning my knee.

Anyway i dont let this minor relapse affect what i do and i carry on as normal. It doesnt hurt that much and i go to university without it hurting that much at all. It was probably the combination of walking everywhere, dancing, spinning around drunk, being dragged round in a drunken cirle hug, playing golf and other activities that aggravate it slightly that made it start to hurt during almost anything and everything i did. It even started hurting when i was just stood up or sat down doing nothing. The worst one was when i was asleep and it started hurting, it was this that made me think i should probably get it checked out.

I went to the local surgery and booked an appointment, the doctor examines my knee and is unsure as to what the problem is so refers me to the phyiotherapist at the surgery...one problem, i have to wait about 6-8weeks before i can see the physiotherapist. So i decide to book the earliest appointment possible and decided to go to a private physiotherapist just so i can start to get it looked at properly. They examine it and say that the problem is that i have very little muscle around the knee because it was never fully rebuilt after the injury.

They give me some exercises i can do at home and i leave somewhat happier knowing i can start to get it sorted out. I keep the appointment i have with the surgery and they tell me pretty much the same as the other physiotherapist and give me almost identical exercises which was heartening because at least i know for definate what the problem with my knee is. It is also dis-heartening because trying to rebuild muscle is a long and loborious process. So off i go with the exercises with a check up in three weeks time.

Three weeks later i return to the physio and they re-assess my knee. After their assessment they say that i will benefit from going to a weekly class at the hospital that is designed for getting people back playing sports as soon as possible. So they book me onto this class and it is at 9am on a tuesday morning...great, nice early start to be running around trying to exercise.

The first morning i went, i felt so rough, not because i was hung over but it turned out that i had the mumps that first week which was a shock to say the least. However i was still able to go and take part in the class and the following week i return (mump free) and i feel a lot better. I could already start to feel the benefit from the class...that and the visits to the gym i have been doing. I make it through the second week unscathed and starting to enjoy the class somewhat. It is a challenge but easy enough for a tuesday morning.

I turn up for the third week and i am doing fine. They call me over to assess my knee which they do most weeks and after the assessment they tell me i am to be moved up to the advanced class...great, even more exercise early in the morning. One small restbite is that it is at 10am on a wednesday morning so i get an hour longer in bed before going. However just before i leave at the end they say to me "Make sure you eat some breakfast before coming down because we push you quite hard and we have had a couple of guys pass out due to low blood sugar levels". This didnt really fill me with confidence and it still doesnt because i am yet to go to my first advanced class. I dont really know what to expect, apart from being worked very hard...oh bugger.

Oh well it must mean that my knee is getting stronger which it is because it is not hurting anywhere near as much as it used to hurt and i can tell the difference when i go to the gym. This still doesnt mean i am looking forward to 10am wednesday morning but i suppose it will help more than hinder...well i hope it does anyway.

Whoops, it was harder than i thought

Ok so i said that i was giving swearing up for lent and i would put 5p into a pot every time i swore and i would give that money to charity. Well it got the better of me and its less than a week after i started it. I was being really strict with making sure i paid up until i went home and one meeting with two of my best friends from home ruined the whole plan. Then playing golf the following day, made it even worse. So i am sorry to say that i have given up on the whole idea of not swearing.

I will still make a contribution to charity but a one off payment will be far easier than trying to keep up with not swearing. At the end of the day i cannot be fucked with it.

Not swearing for lent...how hard could it be?

This year i thought to myself...do i want to give anything up for lent? Nah i can't be bothered, there is no point. This was until i was talking to someone about what they were giving up for lent and they said they were going to give up swearing for lent and they would put 5p in a pot every time they swore. Then at the end of the 40 days and nights they would give the money to charity which i thought was a good idea. I said that they would really struggle with that...but then they said they were only doing it in their flat. I felt this was a cop out...which in a way it is.

So to prove a point about how much of a cop out it was, i said i will give up swearing for lent and will put 5p into a pot every time i swear but it will be anywhere and everywhere. I thought i would regret this decision because i swear far more than i should and it is part of my vocabulary which is not the best thing in the world but it is a hard habit to drop. It is coming to the end of my first day of not swearing and my pot is already rattling quite a bit. After a quick count of the money i have 80p in the pot which means i have sworn 16 times today and that is after trying to swear.

I have a feeling this could end up being quite expensive.

Mumps. bloody mumps

Right ok last monday i was in the shower and i had a blocked ear and when that cleared, my jaw started hurting starting from just below my ear and then my jaw swelled up very quickly. Being a bit stubborn i ignored the advice to go to the doctors straight away and decided to leave it for a bit...that was until i was talking to my mum and told her about the pain and she forced me to visit the health centre. So following my mum's advice i took a visit to the doctor's expecting at the very worst an ear infection which they could give me antibiotics for and everything would be fine. I go at about quarter past 12 as i had a lecture at 1 and i thought i had enough time to fit everything in. That was until i got to the reception and she said i couldnt see a doctor as they were fully booked and i had to sit and wait for the nurse to be free. So i sat and i waited...i was still sat in the waiting room at 12.50 regretting my confidence about my previous time schedule. In the end it didnt matter that i was going to be late for the lecture because once i was finally seen by the nurse and examined she concluded that she suspected i had the mumps. She was not fully confident so she dragged a passing doctor into the treatment room who poked at my swollen sore face constantly for about 2 minutes agreeing with the nurse. Even though he was confident that it was mumps, he still continued to poke the most sensitive bit...bastard. Then the nurse told me the worst news possible...it was not that i would be in a bit of pain...it was not that there was a very small chance that i could be infertile (however that was very high up there)...no the worst news was that i was extremely contagious which meant i had to go into quarentine basically. Quarentine means not being able to see many people which means being extremely bored. I was not wrong in the slightest, i went home for a couple of days as this was "the best place for me" apparently. I do and dont agree with this statement, i agree with it because i was able to go home, relax and not do much for a few days. I disagree because when i am at home during the day there is absolutely nothing to do especially as i was highly contagious and not allowed to leave the house. This was incesantly (i am not overly sure as to the correct spelling of this word) boring and so i returned to infect the general public at the earliest oppurtunity. So if there is a mass epidemic of mumps then i am sorry but i got too bored. So i have returned back to the public domain and i was starting to feel that my condition was receding slightly. I was starting to boast about how easily i had got over the mumps...big mistake! On saturday my face swelled more viciously than ever before and the swelling got worse on the sunday. It was excruciating to eat and swallow and i was not having a very fun time at all. However as quickly as my face swelled up, it shrunk back to normal...ish size again. My jaw has stopped hurting when i eat and swallow as a result of the mumps which is always a good sign however the illness is still in my system so until it is fully clear of my system i will always be on the edge. I will update when i am completely healthy again...hopefully it will be soon...