Bring me indifference
On manky blood and my manky heart
I may have mentioned that my shin bone fractured at the same time as my relationship. Both happened — or began to happen, in the case of the relationship — in early January. Since then I have been stoic about my bone. I have patiently done all my physio exercises. I have paid for laser therapy. And I read all about stress fractures, constantly. This is the one thing common to every single paper I read on stress fractures.
Healing time is six to eight weeks
You’d think it was required by some law that this be in any journal or website piece about stress fractures. Thing is, it’s wrong. It’s wrong if you’re a menopausal woman.
At the weekend I headed up to Horton-in-Ribblesdale to marshal at the Three Peaks Race. I’ve done this race four times. I’ve written about it at great length here and here and here and here. I thought it would be good distraction. These days I’m all about distraction. I’ve been to a climbing wall for the first time in my life. I’ve been wild swimming on my own to this beautiful place and discovered that swimming in 10 degree water is much improved by having a sauna right next to the lake steps:
I have filled my social calendar with cinema trips, social occasions, trips away. I am doing everything I can to feel better, to fill my brain with something other than all the feelings. But the only place I don’t feel all the feelings is when I am immersed in cold water and I can’t do that all the time. It’s hard to re-write a book when you’re breaststroking, for a start.
I don’t feel better yet. And I was shocked when, instead of being a distraction, my 24 hours at the Three Peaks turned out to be extremely tough. Here’s what I wrote:
Fake the happiness until it is real, I guess. That was the fractured heart. The fractured bone bit : on my way up to get a cup of tea from the top pavilion (as we had volunteered to work on registration from 7.30am as well as marshal on Whernside until 2.30pm) I met Denise Park, an excellent physio who always does the commentary at the Three Peaks. I’ve seen Denise for a couple of injuries I’ve had, and the only reason I didn’t go to her for this one was that she was away and I was desperate (so maybe I wasn’t that stoic). She asked if my bone had healed. I said, I’m on phase 3 of 4 phases in my recovery programme. Phase 3 is “return to impact”. Phase 4 is “return to running.” Phase 3 means I have to leap and hop for a couple of weeks, as both those actions mimic the load that running puts on bones, and if my bone copes with that, I can start to run, cautiously. But Denise, I said, all the papers say 6-8 weeks for healing, and I’m in week 16. She nodded wisely and said, “delayed healing.”
What?
She asked if I was on adequate HRT and I said yes, though I don’t absorb oestrogen very well. She asked if I was on testosterone. Also yes. But even so, she was not at all surprised that my bone was taking longer than the 6-8 weeks law says. She also said, “25% of menopausal women have gluteal tendinopathy.” I am one of those 25%. It’s because our collagen drops through the floor, and collagen heals tendons and if tendons are pissed off you get tendinopathy and you might also impact your bone, as tendons are the scaffolding that make the impact on bone tolerable. Denise wants to give a talk on the effect of the menopause on active women. I would go to that. I think when many people hear “menopausal women” they don’t picture this:
but an overweight (OK, that’s me at the moment but not for long now I can use my legs again) sedentary woman who has capitulated. There is hardly any research into healing in the menopause (I know that my skin no longer heals like it should), or why recovery is delayed. SOMEONE SHOULD DO SOME.
Random fact
Ten percent of people are low on the hypnotizable scale. I am one of those ten percent. No, my arm does not feel like a balloon and yes I can still control it perfectly well. I know this because I am still desperately reading everything about breakups and self-healing and recovery. Breakup Boss, Breakup Bestie, Rewire Your Brain, self-hypnosis: I’m there. Because it’s not enough to say “focus on the positive” when my brain has nostalgia goggles on and when I am desperate for contact with my ex because I miss him but know that that is the last thing that would do me good. To be catapulted from a life where he was my closest person, my best friend, to cutting him off completely: it’s kind of hideous. Hence the balloon.
What’s the solution to being more hypnotizable according to the professor who set up the self-hypnosis app? Do more hypnosis and pay for it.
Manky blood
I’m so pleased that infected blood is in the headlines and that victims dead and alive may finally get some justice and an adequate amount of compensation. I wrote about “manky blood” in Nine Pints, and I was shocked by what I learned about the blatant criminality of the authorities at the time, and the cowardice of authorities since. I’m not surprised by “revelations” such as this one, that authorities knew they were giving haemophiliacs and people with clotting disorders infected, dangerous plasma. Of course they knew.
I attended the Infected Blood Inquiry in Leeds a few years ago. I was impressed with the calm kindness of the chair Sir Brian Langstaff, and shocked by the grief and pain of the witnesses who testified. Shocked, even though I knew the history. The inquiry will report soon and I hope Langstaff gives all the barrels not just both of them.
From Nine Pints:
In the UK, the prime minister has promised a proper inquiry into the contaminated blood scandal, though at first the government wanted the Department of Health to investigate itself. There are hopes but not high ones. The death toll that will come from hepatitis C is unknown, because it is not routinely tested for. When doctors in a London hospital recently did a pilot study, they found that rates were three times as high as was believed. Only 250 of the 1,500 British haemophiliacs infected with HIV are alive. Sixty-two contaminated blood victims have died since plans for the new inquiry were announced in July 2017. Of 89 haemophiliac boys at Treloar College during the years of contamination, 72 are dead. I understand why hemophiliacs call themselves the “shut up and die” community: wait long enough, as some governments have, and probably there will be no one left to complain. I watch on YouTube a short film by Bruce Norval, a Scottish haemophiliac infected with hepatitis C, and a vocal campaigner. He filmed it outside, with him leaning against a concrete post. From the exhaustion in his voice, I suspect it is a prop in more ways than a staging one. He sounds weary, but there is force in his quietness. “I shall retain an absolute shame,” he says, “to be part of a country that would perpetuate such a crime.” He is sure that the British authorities who gave tainted factor to haemophiliacs without telling them and when they knew it wasn’t safe are stalling. They just have to wait sixteen more years and all the infected will be dead, of hep C or complications from HIV, of tainted plasma protein products or what he calls “manky blood.” It’s just maths now. But they’re not gone yet. And they’re not done with wanting to know why something that was supposed to be safe, and that was supposed to give them life, gave them death instead. So “for that last little bit,” says Bruce, in his unsettlingly quiet tones, “we’re going to scream blue murder.”
Reading corner
This was such an extraordinary piece of writing by Lauren Benstead, about a crash course in hurtling into what Susan Sontag called “the nightside of life.”
I would put more links here but Apple News is being a dick and not saving stories that I ask it to save.
Animal hero of the week : Storm the Alaskan Malamute
What’s an Alaskan Malamute? God, I don’t know. I don’t speak dog. I have friends who have dogs and they have all learned to speak dog. Oh, that’s a [whatever]. Cat people don’t do that. A cat, unless it’s something really obviously well known like a Burmese or a Person, is a cat.
Storm is an Alaskan Malamute. They are, the internet tells me, heavyweight sled dogs, and the Malamute was probably bred by the Malimiut Inupiaq people of Norton Sound in Alaska. Storm did not live in Norton Sound but in Liverpool. In 2019, two burglars broke into the house in Wavertree that Storm shared with Karen Crosby, 64.
The burglars had probably drugged Storm, but it didn’t work. He stopped them getting upstairs, where Karen was asleep, and was vociferous enough that when he chased them from the house, they dropped their loot, enabling the police to get the burglars’ fingerprints. (Were they actually arrested and convicted? Look at current arrest rates and for which offences and work it out. The answer is probably not.)
Not content with being the Jack Reacher of dogs, Storm is also a full-time therapy dog for both Karen and her husband Phil. Phil had two brain injuries, epilepsy and dementia; Karen has fibromyalgia and asthma.
Before Phil moved into a care home, Storm would help with his walking and gently nudge him if he wasn’t walking in a straight line. He continues to do this for Karen who has degenerative disc disease and little sensation in her left leg. She also has visual field problems and tinnitus, so Storm helps her to check the traffic before crossing the road as well as alerting her to the telephone and doorbell at home.
With further daily support for Karen, Storm senses and alerts her before she has an attack due to her fibromyalgia and asthma. If an attack is imminent, he won’t leave her side and comforts her with the pain.
In 2022, Karen was out shopping. Storm was home with his three cat housemates, Pushkin, Moonlight and Pippin. The house caught fire.
When Karen returned, Storm had already pushed two of the cats through a window. He was waiting patiently by the kitchen door to be rescued when help arrived.
Pushkin had collapsed due to smoke inhalation and had to be resuscitated by the fire service, but all four pets survived, largely thanks to Storm.
Karen said: “The fire brigade could not believe how Storm saved two of my cats and trusted that help would soon arrive.
"The police were so impressed they personally took him down the road to his vet to check hadn’t inhaled the smoke or been harmed. The officer would not leave his side and said he was as good as a trained police dog.”
Dog rescues cats! So Storm, now 13, was awarded the Blue Cross medal, beating 650 other nominations. The Daily Mail decided to call Storm “Britain’s most heroic dog.” I won’t bother linking you to the piece as the writer copied and pasted the Blue Cross website. Fine journalism.
Although then again without it we wouldn’t have an excellent comment from a Daily Mail reader. Here is a picture of one of the rescued cats:
And here is his (I bet it’s a he) comment:
This is the bit where I politely urge you with Yorkshire grit to a) subscribe or b) upgrade to a paid subscription or c) click on the like button so I know you’ve read and maybe liked this. Needy? Yes. And?
So sorry things have been so rough Rose. Wishing you that blessed indifference! And thinking of you x
Obviously "Person" should have read "Persian" but I quite like this version so I'm leaving it.