Sweetfooltheblog

Happy Christmas, Happy New Year and so on. Ours was a nice quiet one, no travel to York, no travel to Australia – we stayed at home and did nothing. It was LOVELY.

My back still hurts several months on, but not as badly – it’ll just take a long time to heal, whatever it is I did to it. I’ve been told one side has more tense muscles than the other which is nice to know but would be nicer if there was something which would fix it. Pilates classes have helped.

So yes, 2012. Speak to me again this time next year, and let’s hope it’s a good one…

I’ve had on-off back troubles which usually resolve themself after a day or two with a lot of rest – but over the last few weeks, particularly at work I’ve found my chair and work area to be so uncomfortable that while the pain has gone on the way home in the car, and resolved itself, it suddenly didn’t. This happened last Monday, and by Tuesday at 5pm I was left laid on the floor of our living room asking H to pass me the remote controls so I could put the tv on to distract her, as 1. she’d have jumped on me, she likes jumping on people lying on the floor and 2. I couldn’t lift my head to see where they were anyway.

Fortunately she did, and an hour later Shaun arrived home, and I headed straight to bed. The following day I was unable to move – at all. It actually got to the point where the out of hours doctor wouldn’t see me, my GP wouldn’t do a home visit as she had nothing she could administer anyway, so it was suggested I rang 999.

I’m no timewaster and it felt like I was, but that was my only option offered by the professionals, so I did… and after being told by the people on the line I’d get a car with someone with an injection to help loosen up my back so I could move (as by now it was about 4pm and I’d been in a similar spot in bed for a lonnnng long time and was needing the loo, let alone anything else), and I’d get a follow up call. Not long after that there was a knock on the door… and they’ve only gone and sent an ambulance. Lordy.

Gas and air were my very best friend when giving birth to H, and they became my very best friend again, I went into a high kind of happy chatty life is lovely kind of mode, the paramedics eventually were able to sit me up and walk me out (but oh it hurt), and off we went to hospital. I’d like to say that being in an ambulance was a bit exciting, although last year when Rachel went into labour early I went in hers with her, but it’s just Not Like Casualty.

Got to hospital to wait and wait and wait until I was pushed into a cubicle, transferred to a bed (with more gas and air) and seen by a really nice nurse who took my blood pressure and pulse and all that stuff. Who also told me women aren’t meant to carry anything above 8kg! (Just a guess, maybe she’s not a mum? How on earth do you get around that?!) By then the gas and air had gone, a doctor came, sent me home and told me to get out of my bed – all well and good but I couldn’t actually move – and I was on my own as Shaun had to stay at home with Holly.

The nurse/sister in charge wasn’t the most sympathetic – I got it though, they thought I was wasting their time. I was only acting on what the professionals had decided, it was out of my control! She wouldn’t help me out of the bed, couldn’t get why I couldn’t sit up and swing my legs over (err because my lower back was where the pain was?!) and pushed up the back of the bed to help (when I suggested it) so jerkily it was just pain, pain, pain.

Eventually Shaun arrived and we got out with me yelping in pain (not letting H see, who was in her buggy which made a good prop for me to walk with as I don’t know how I’d have done it otherwise), nice nurse ran off and found me a nice strong painkiller which was enough for me to get myself in the car, sat down and we headed off home.

What a pain though. If only my GP had been able to do that I’d have probably saved a LOT of people’s time. Apparently GP’s don’t carry these as they’re likely to get mugged, so refer you higher up. Why I didn’t get someone in a car who could administer it rather than an ambulance I’m not entirely sure either.

Don’t get me wrong – I’m grateful that I was dealt with, I just think it was done badly. I’m not sure whose fault it is, all I know is I’m now signed off work for two weeks and it’s giving me a lot of time to think about it all..

we did it – it was an extremely hot day, and by the very end I felt so giddy with lack of food and needing more water, but we all did it.

Jule and I did it in exactly 59 minutes, and Rachel and Heather did it a couple of minutes later. I even ran a tiny bit at the end, to make sure I was under an hour. Oh the hills, the hills. It was okay until they arrived, and then you really felt every muscle in the back of your legs.

The dads all sat in the shade with the kids, Shaun with Holly, Lewis with Molly and Joe with Jesse – and oh thank goodness they were there – although DJ man seemed to have run out of music and was playing the same songs we had when we started the race – so we escaped to the quiet and calm for a picnic.

Rachel has started a local knitting group – we meet every other Wednesday in the pub, more info is over here.