I tap my latest musing from the soothing comforts of the bed – it is from here that I nurse a distinctly numb foot after a close encounter with a rather large needle. While this sensation of deadening numbness may be new to my lower limb, the feeling is a familiar - if somewhat unwelcome - guest to my body. It is in fact the same heavy state that my jaw and cheekbone carry after I’ve spent 2 hours cursing the dentist - wriggling in her chair and pleading for the bright light overhead to finally come and take me away. Today however, no piercing instruments of dentistry were involved, merely a cortisone injection into the sheeting around my tendon (the name of which escapes me).
I have a little tale… it involves a physio, a specialist, me, and it culminates in an uncomfortable visit to the hospital – hmm, that line that may yet grace my epitaph as it tends to feature in most of my life stories (for example, that time I had to get an x-ray in Ecuador and they thought they had ‘rayed’ the wrong hand – bit of a ‘lost in translation’ moment that, or that time my finger was smashed to bits and Bec fainted on first sight of it, or that time I got an asthma attack while on the piss 2 hours from the hospital and had to stop off for oxygen on the way at a doctors surgery, any one of the three operations on my eyes, or that time I got hypothermia as a child, or that... you get the picture).
Anyways, a little bit of a recap is in order (it wouldn't be a blog without it) as a lot has happened since the last update
- Physio the 2nd wasn’t overly confident my MRI had been read correctly (by the ”specialist”) due to the length of time I have been laid up.
- (So)… I returned to the offending hospital, picked up the MRI scans on CD, and trotted out the door to get someone else to read them.
- (So)…. Armed with the necessary data, Physio the 2nd managed to squeeze me an appointment with the Irish Consultant who specialises in sports related injuries (Dr Eanna Falvey – Irish runners who have gone through the mill have probably come across him)
- (So)…. the consultant sees me the following week and spotted issues with the sheeting around my tendon on the MRI scan (it’s a tendon that runs from the calf, through the foot and onwards to the big toe). It appears herein lies the problem and it was all triggered by my insistence on running over the arch after hitting that f^$&*~g stone (no offence geologists, stones are awesome).
- (And So Finally)…. In order to do everything to keep Paris a realistic target, I was elevated up the waiting list (once again) for an appointment in the hospital at 2:30 today (3 days after the referral l).
Here comes the ever-so-slightly embarrassing part; the only way to fit me in was to get the injection in the BIU. When they asked me was I comfortable with getting it done in the hospital’s BIU, I told them sure, no problem, BIU, look for signs for the BIU, gotcha, make it happen, let’s get this puppy on the road. Today I found out that the hospital’s BIU is the ‘Breast Imaging Unit’. Yep, Cork’s only breast imaging unit. Picture the scene, a 30 minute wait, me and 15 women of varying vintages squeezed into a small pinkish alcove. Before us, a pyramid of women’s magazines… fonts of womanly information… Hello, OK, Soap UK,they were all there. Not a Top Gear nor a Golf World amongst them. While I busied myself looking awkward and desperately trying not to catch anyone in the eye, the elderly lady beside me coloured in the areas of her breasts that were of concern to her on her forms. Finally, the nurse arrived came out, “EMER MORRISSEY, is EMER MORRISSEY here”, to which I burst forward but shyly remarked… “Elmer, it’s Elmer Morrissey”…. “ah yes, so it is, my apologies”… to which I replied… “no bother, it seemed fitting”.
So here I am, back home, and give or take, it’s 8 and a half weeks to Paris. I am not to run for 6 days. After that, I can load up on runs of increasing length for 1 week (up to around an hour in length). Once that’s out of the way, I can START my training programme. I would welcome any suggestions as to condensing a 3-4 month marathon training programme into 6 weeks… seriously.
The bet, it’s on hold, it would be naive and probably catastrophic to pursue that target time. That’s ok though, I have a new goal - I want to enjoy my first marathon, I want to soak in the atmosphere, the highs and the lows, the nervous tension of the start as well as the explosion of emotion at the finish. Running the Paris Marathon will be enough.
59 days to Paris.
