Wheelistically @ Claire.NU

Where have I been, you ask?

Mostly either pre­oc­cu­pied with my new pho­to­graphy toys or com­pletely flat-out and exhausted from my physio­ther­apy pro­gramme. Yup, that’s right, I’m back ‘on the wagon’ with the physio and this time, I’m serious.

As some of you may know: my back, hips, neck, shoulders and Achilles ten­dons have been giv­ing me merry Hell over this last year to the point where these last few weeks, I’ve been stuck in bed for the dur­a­tion brav­ing K’s Win­dows Vista laptop as my sole source of enter­tain­ment. Yes, it was that bad. On one day in par­tic­u­lar, I was marooned in bed with a thera­peutic heat pad for about 6 or 7 hours, dosed up on Valium and hav­ing eaten only half a dozen Cus­tard Creams the entire time as they were the only source of food near the bed. Part way through, after I’d man­aged to get reas­on­ably settled, I weighed up the pros and cons of mov­ing when I needed to get up and make the agon­ising jour­ney to the bath­room in order to have a much needed wee. After a few spas­modic moves and with­er­ing yelps, I voted to stay put; more pre­pared was I to lay in my own piss (should the event arise) than risk set­ting my back off again. THAT IS HOW MUCH IT HURT.

Med­ic­a­tion wasn’t work­ing, bed rest wasn’t work­ing, the only thing left to try was my old physio­ther­apy pro­gramme back from the days of my post-op rehab­il­it­a­tion pro­gramme. It’s been years since I last did any proper form of physio; physio is to me what a bal­anced diet and reg­u­lar work-outs are to every­one else. You know and accept that it’s all good for you and you def­in­itely think it’s some­thing you should be doing, but not today, eh? Maybe tomor­row, when you’re less busy. Or next week. Yeah, get the week­end out the way so that you can have a Chinese and start afresh on Monday. Only, it never really hap­pens. Or you do it for a couple of days and then it fizzles to noth­ing. That’s exactly how the last 3 or 4 years have been with me and physio.

This last week I resolved to play the game. Every day for 45 minutes to an hour, I’ve com­mit­ted myself to the pro­gramme, even the bits that I hate, and I’ve not had to whim­per back to bed. Not even once.

But, ye Gods, do I hate it. I des­pise physio with a pas­sion that knows no bounds. I sel­dom feel more dis­abled than when I’m doing physio­ther­apy exer­cises. It’s the one time when I’m delib­er­ately and repeatedly smack­ing my head against every minu­tiae of what my body will and won’t do; hav­ing to fight against the demen­ted way my body instinct­ively oper­ates to try and get it to move in a way I want it to, for a change. Each move­ment is so pathetic, so tiny, so weak and yet every one is an exhaust­ing vic­tory in the con­stant battle of get­ting my legs to do what my brain tells them to. I never really appre­ci­ate just how mangled the mes­sages sent from my brain are until I’m sat there con­cen­trat­ing, star­ing, will­ing my toes to wiggle or even twitch in the tini­est, tini­est way and they just stare back at me totally static, refus­ing to move and all the while my entire foot makes small, spas­tic, jud­dery, up-and-down move­ments at the ankle. It’s like my brain’s way of say­ing: Will this do? Is this close enough because I can do this, look! This is what you meant, isn’t it?

Admit­tedly, it’s not quite what I was going for, but I never have the heart to say any­thing as I can tell it’s try­ing so very hard. It can’t help being broken.

To keep my spir­its up and keep myself on track, I’ve taken to bribing/rewarding myself with new pho­to­graphy equip­ment and as a treat to myself this week, I’ve ordered a wire­less remote release for my cam­era. Squee.

Speak­ing of new cam­era equip­ment, a Man­frotto tri­pod head arrived this week for use with my Gor­il­lapod. It’s a small ball-joint head with a quick-release plate so was a bit more expens­ive that the cheaper altern­at­ive without a plate, but I think the extra expense is well worth it. Unscrew­ing and re-screwing my cam­era every 5 minutes would drive me nuts, not to men­tion cause undue wear and tear on the thread inside the D70s.

This is the third piece of Man­frotto hard­ware in my kit and as usual, I’m not dis­ap­poin­ted. It feels really solid and I trust it with my cam­era, the addi­tional plus being that the plate on the tri­pod head also fits well on my exist­ing Man­frotto Magic Arm, so I don’t have to piss about switch­ing plates.

Besides hav­ing the ini­tial out-of-the-box play, I’ve not yet had much chance do much tri­pod work and give my new addi­tion a good work out. I have how­ever, indulged and used it as the sub­ject of my recent Macrobation.