It's all in your head

OK stand by, gird your loins, deep breaths, take a few steps back. This one is going to be a rant. Anyone who has had a major injury or any kind of reconstructive surgery will know, that the hardest part comes when you think it should be easy. The bit where the bandages, the plaster cast, the surgical boot etc, come off, and you emerge with your new whatever it is to twirl away into the sunset. And in fact it's the reverse. You take off the surgical boot to find that your new foot is so swollen and stiff it won't fit into any but your largest and ugliest trainers, that it hurts like hell to take a step, and that by the time you have made it to the top of your street all the muscles from your heel to your bum are screaming from the effort of compensating. That, my friends, is what physiotherapy is all about. It is about pushing, pushing, pushing through that pain, that refusal of your body to do what it must do, to get it to a place where the machinery is functioning in a perfectly balanced formation. Our bodies are designed for the cop out route. Any excuse to move sloppily and the body will do it. The slightest ache and other parts of you will step in and do the job instead, thus sending you right down the slippery slope of referral pain, collapsing joints, blah blah blah. To be successful at physiotherapy you have to be really, really brave. Really, really committed. Perhaps even a bit crazy. But you also, I think, need a goal. Do you think, at the end of this, I will be able to run? I ask my physiotherapist. I have in my head an objective of doing the Race For Life, which I did just once a few years back and absolutely loved - masses upon masses of women and girls clad in pink running, jogging or walking, but mainly CHATTING their way through a 5k run for cancer research. My physiotherapist refuses to commit herself. I get why that is. Yes of course you'll be able to, she might say, and then I find I can't, and then I sue her right? Except that, to refuse to admit an element of the aspirational in this journey of difficulty and pain, is to deny a very basic instinct to reach for the stars. We all do better when we have a goal, even if that goal seems totally, ridiculously unreachable. I am in daily admiration of people whose blogs and columns I read, who have suffered appalling damage to their bodies and who have a non negotiable determination to achieve rehabilitation goals that their medical practitioners chip away at by throwing statistics at them about plateauing or whatever. Let's be clear about this. Medical science can only get you so far. I have worked witih some brilliant physiotherapists but they and I both know that ninety percent of my recovery, my ability to restore full mobility and be that Olympic Marathon Runner (no! no! I yelped at her, it's just a 5k FUN RUN - but I might as well not have bothered - a fun run for someone with a brand new foot is the equivalent goal of emulating Paula Radcliffe in her prime), is all about my own mental will. And since I am now on my third round of rehabilitation after three sets of surgery, nobody knows this better than I. It is no coincidence that in each case I have "defied the odds" coming out of plaster/boots etc etc early, making shock gasp speedy recovery etc etc. How was that possible? Because I worked really, really hard at it. Because when I could not go on any further, I went on. Because when the pain was so bad it brought tears to my eyes, I muttered to myself, wiped away the tears, and did it again. Oh, and because I bake like crazy. Yup, there is a link. Baking, in case you have not yet worked this out fro my blog, is my consolation, my reward, my personal creative process. It is my escape, my place to unload stress, and most of all, it is a thing of beauty that I can control. Leg in plaster? Bake kneeling on a chair. Even when you feel at your very worst about yourself, producing a sponge cake dusted with icing and a few strawberries thrown on the side, reminds you that although it may feel as if your life is all about managing pain, you are still more than capable of generating beauty, and love, and a few inches on other peoples' waistlines.