::Griffblog::

It’s that time of year where thousands of unfit and wholly unprepared idiots decide to enter the London marathon. And this year I’m one of them!

My sister has done it, but she’s a health and sports nut and did it in some insanely decent time. But also, my brother-in-law has done it, and he’s a chain smoking, fast food eating, skin and bone freak. So surely there is hope for me?  I’m neither a fitness freak nor a smoker (anymore) nor skin and bone. Well I am, there is lots of skin, and lots of flesh underneath, but the normal amount of bone if you exclude the extra bit I grew a few years back.

It’s now two years since I had my leg stretched, see here for the full story (NSFW). I’ve since rediscovered a love for running. I used to do a lot of it in school, and loved long distance cross country. I did rather more of it in the Army but liked it a good deal less. Combats, boots, webbing, an SMG and a smattering of PTI’s swearing at you didn’t help.

And so, at 45 years, I’ve decided it’s something I must do. So I’ve entered the ballot. With more than 100,000 entries and only 30,000 places the chances are slim. But if I don’t succeed in securing a place I’ll bid for a charity slot. Yes, I’m determined. And when I get the bit between my teeth I can be bloody minded too. So, if I do get to enter, keep a keen eye out for a silver haired fox, very possibly on oxygen, drinking G+T and smoking a cigar, crossing Tower Bridge sometime in the early evening of race day.

My last post on the subject of my ilizarov op was last November. At the time I wrote that I had begun attending a gym and was well on the way to full recovery.

So what’s happened in the 8 months since then? I’m still a very keen gym user, I go three days per week whenever possible. I’ve even got into ‘spinning’ which is the high intensity bike exercise class. I went on a diet after New Year and have, so far, lost more than 2st.

I’ve also started running. I had to wait 12mths after the frame was removed to be sure that the new bone was strong enough before impact sports such as running. Because it has been so long since I did any form of running (other than dashing across a busy road) it was suggested that the ‘Couch to 5k’ programme may be worth a go.

Continue reading…

My last blog entry was a few months back. At the time I was struggling with morphine withdrawal and the blog wasn’t high on the to-do list.

I’m glad to report that I did manage to get through it. Given I had thrown away the last of the morphine prescription and I wasn’t about to go out and try and get some illegal drugs it was a foregone conclusion I guess!

But it was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do and gives you a whole new perspective on the life of a drug addict. Mine was prescribed and controlled and still I became addicted so it is easy to see how a drug abuser can become hooked all too quickly.

Life is pretty much back to normal now, I’m still on the road to full fitness, knee still quite a way of full mobility but 120º of bend now which is great and means I can now kneel, run and ride a bike.

I’m now a regular gym attendee and am glad I had my leg sorted. So the main issues of life are not the more usual ones, the business, making ends meet and trying not to put too much weight back on!

I’m now 9 days in and it’s been far far harder than I had anticipated!

I’d optimistically thought that the worst would be over after 3-4 days but over a week in and I’m still struggling with the side effects of the morphine withdrawal.

With 24hours of stopping I was suffering the expected symptoms of aches and pains, headaches, flu like symptoms etc but the worst was the agitation and a weird feeling in arms and legs which caused me to shake them continually for hours at a time. A mix of pins and needles, a buzzing feeling etc.

It meant sleep was very difficult and for the first few days I could only sleep when pure exhaustion took over, sometimes grabbing a few hours at most. Continue reading…

Those of you who have followed the progress of my operation will know that I was taking morphine, tramadol and voltarol regularly to deal with the pain of the ilizarov fixator device.

Whilst I could never have coped without the help of the pain medications, the downside is of course that, now the procedure is complete I have to go through drug withdrawal.

I had been taking tramadol and morphine at 4hourly intervals for over 6mths. Both are very strong opiate based medications and both have known addictive side effects. So I was somewhat prepared for the fact that my body would have developed an addiction and I would have to suffer the symptoms of withdrawal.

I’ve been here before, when I had the original accident and broke my back I was on strong opiate meds for over a year. And so my GP agreed that I should undertake a slow progressive withdrawal. This involves my reducing the meds by small amounts in gradual stages. Continue reading…