I'm fine, really!

People keep asking me how I'm doing. This is an incredibly difficult question to answer when it comes down to it. But the simplest answer is that I'm doing quite well, I suppose. Like Kay, I'm keeping myself fully occupied with work and everything and anything else that I can think of strong enough to distract me from what is coming. And I think I'm doing that pretty well. Admittedly a few aches and pains here and there, but I'm dealing with those by visiting the Physio a couple of times per week.

My weak spot is my neck and shoulders, particularly my right shoulder, which is pretty painful at the moment. But, yeh, this is where I always feel a build up of stress. Apart from the treatment by the Physio, I'm supposed to spend 2x10 mins per day lying on a backstretcher. This device is great for loosening up a stiff back/shoulders. Normally I can spend 10 mins lying on it but my back is so stiff at the moment that 5 mins is more than enough. So I have something to aim for! Still none of this really gets in the way of anything.

A bit more annoying is that for the last week or so I have been waking up with a headache, the kind that feels like a fairly heavy hangover. And this has been happening even when I hadn't had a drink the evening before. Starting the day with a headache makes it even more difficult to get moving, but I have a lot of things to do, so I've taken to killing it off with ibuprofen. This has the added advantage of making my shoulder less painful. Also, I suspect that neck/shoulder issue might be causing the headaches, but I would then expect them later in the day, not when I wake up. A puzzle.

It's a shame that ibuprofen doesn't help irritable bowel syndrome problems, because then I could kill three birds with one stone. IBS is an old enemy of mine that comes and goes with the times. I've been pretty free of it for the last year or two, but yeh, it's back again. Exercise helps greatly to reduce the symptoms, but that's something that I can only really do in the mornings at the moment. By the time that evening comes around I'm just too tired to get on my bike or the cross-trainer. I was planning to jump on the cross-trainer yesterday morning, but in the end was beaten by the headache.

Another side effect of this is that I'm not burning the usual amount of calories. Combined with a reduced will to exercise and general tiredness my self discipline has also slipped meaning that I've put back on 5kg of the 10kg that I lost a year or so ago. I can feel it when I'm cycling, like dragging around a weight belt. Annoying, but you know, I'll sort that out when life gets back to normal-ish.

I was lying in bed this morning, waking up and lazily thinking about the general need to get up and do something when I felt my nose start to run. Not the normal cold sort of run, but a warm trickle - nose bleed. Fortunately only a minor one, but rather out of the blue. It set me thinking: maybe all this worry is having more effect than I'm admitting. But yeh, what can one expect? Fortunately none of these things are actually getting in the way of living the day out and none of them are strangers to me. Bearing in mind divorce, leukemia 1, Verum and leukemia 2, I've lived my life with one or more of these symptoms for many years now and I'm still just fine. Aren't I?

Anyway, I have to run. The long hours of working & computer use have given me the beginnings of "mouse-arm" in my right wrist and lower arm. I have be a little careful not to push my wrist too hard or the blogs will be silenced. The one advantage of starting the BMT will be that my wrist will have some time to recover.

So yeh, under the circumstances I'm just fine, really.