Predicting when it will strike is rather like trying to tell
when the next earthquake will ripple, out there, along the San Andreas
fault. There’s a whole science built
around trying to tell when the earth will next quake. Armies exist of researchers, observers,
record keepers and data gatherers. But
my synovial cyst, the one there in my lower spine, bulging like a peanut, a
jelly bean, a leak of oil coming out of the gearbox that is my no longer that
powerful back - that one has only me keeping track of its meanderings, its
appearances, its pressure points, its miserable actions and reactions
.
I’ve been tracking it for almost a year now. I use a spread sheet – giving it daily marks
on the scale of 1 to 10. 1 equals barely
discernible. 10 is screaming agony. I’ve
got to 8 and often hit 7. The last time
was on the way home from the Park Plaza bar in the drumming rain, Guinness sloshing
inside me. The discomfort just got to me. I had to
sit on a university wall up beyond the Queen Street rail bridge. Wait there to be rescued, rain in my ears,
rain down my neck, rain in my face. But
sitting did hold the pain back.
I showed the spread sheet to my specialist. Showed him the highlights anyway. He took absolutely no interest. They come and go these things, he told me,
waving my scruffy bit of paper away. They
are hard to predict. We have to wait and
see if they are unbearable. Are they
unbearable right now? I’m sitting there
in his patient’s chair, stress banging through me on account of how I’m sure
any minute he’s going to recommend me for a major op, metal inserted, walk with
difficulty, never to be the same old me again.
No, they’re not. I tell him this
truthfully. They aren’t. This consultation morning unaccountably and unpredictably
I’m utterly pain free.
The following week, however, it all comes rolling back. The need to sit down all the time to gain
relief. Or to stand at a funny angle,
leaning forward to out to the right. It alleviates
things. I do it in the queue at the
single basket till in Marks and Spencer’s.
Fellow shoppers look at me as if I’m a weirdo. A loon just arrived from the farm. Just got in from Mars, I tell them. I have to stand like this because of the
gravity. I smile. They turn away.
I’ve moved house, too, which has made things worse. There seems to be a direct correlation
between stress and discomfort levels. It’s
as if somehow the raised shoulders and
strained stomach that accompany worry unwittingly open the neural pathways to the
doings of the synovial cyst. Let the
bastard through. Let him beat me once
again.
Not that I’m really that keen on allowing anything to actually
beat me. I fight back. I’m trying whiskey this week which, despite
not really doing much to interfere with the synovial process, certainly makes
life feel a lot better. In the new house
I’ve got the single malts – I have a collection now – in a line at eye level in
the kitchen cupboard. Like books of
poetry by poets I admire. Inspirational
and always worth returning to.
I forgot to take the prednisolone yesterday and, if truth be
told as Nessa would say, I may well have forgotten the day before too. Post move the old routines have all
collapsed. I barely know where I
am. I opened a box marked in the removal
man’s scrawly hand as “shoes”. It
contained cushions. I did see a box labelled
“drugs” in the back of a new cupboard somewhere but have yet to find them
again.
The Brompton I have found.
My folding bike sits, collapsed like a transformer, under the
stairs. I’ll be on it tomorrow. Leaning out over the handle bars at that
Martian angle, moving while sitting. A
painless process. And I can do it in the
streaming, fresh faced, open and very
earthly air.
On Saturday 22nd and Saturday 29th
June, 2013 I’ll be conducting a Cardiff delta exploration, to be done by
bike. The estuary that is Cardiff revealed. The city you barely knew existed. Two and half hours of anecdote, cycling, poetry,
alternative history, topography and comment.
If you don’t own a bike we can loan you one. More details can be found here http://www.cardiffcycletours.com/real-cardiff-by-bike/ No mentions of prednisolone nor synovial
cysts. Just maybe the odd Martian lean
as we cycle into the wind.
