Orthoses

Those who have known me (or indeed ‘known’ me) for a while will know two things about me – that I have a long-term back problem, and that I have real difficulty in finding shoes to fit.

The former of these issues has been ticking away in the background over the past few years. Every so often I find something that improves my day-to-day flexibility and pain threshold, which on the basis that prevention is better than cure often turns out to be well worth it. Such an inspiration came a few months ago when, as seems to be the case with so many such inspirations in life, I was standing in the shower – on this occasion, observing my feet.

My feet have always been a source of frustration to me. They are longer than average (as one might expect given my height) and narrower than average, the combination of which makes it nigh-on impossible to buy shoes at all, never mind nice shoes. They are funnily shaped. They pronate when I walk and point in when I stand still, something which my parents have loosely commented on for many years now.

But it was while standing in the shower, on a day when my right hip was twinging and my whole spinal cord seemed to weigh down on its base, that I experimented. I deliberately changed the angle at which I was standing, first turning my feet to point in a outward V shape, and then slowly rolling onto the outsides of my soles. The difference to my posture was palpable (, especially once I’d moved the shower head out of my head’s way in the new, taller posture).

Anyway, to cut a long story short I finally visited a podiatrist last week and have been told (after a rather amusing session in which I was required to change into shorts and walk barefoot for aeons up and down a waiting corridor) that I need orthoses – i.e. moulding supports in my shoes. Alas there is not room for them in my current trainers (having had to buy a size 8 and that), so I was bid to go shop!, and come back with something suitable. Needless to say my heart sank at this… until I came back with these:

I love them. Put simply, I love them! I am praying and praying that they will be deemed suitable for medical adaption. They certainly fulfill all the criteria on the checklist I was given. They’re made in black and brown – I was already to buy some brown ones when the customer service assistant informed me, “Oh, we don’t do the brown ones in size 9.”. Typical. But they are beautiful nonetheless, have lovely soft furry stuff at the back of the heels, and are exactly the style of shoe-boot that I have been coveting for some time.

And you know what? They currently don’t fit because they are too deep, and too wide for my narrow, pronated feet with high arches. But hopefully the orthoses will take up that extra room as well as providing support – and will do in future pairs of shoes. I may have killed two birds with one, very efficient stone. Fingers crossed!

Dear God

, if you’re out there at all. Or indeed in here, I’m not fussy, honestly, I’m not.

1. Please make my hip stop hurting constantly. You have no idea how painful it is, and if you could rid me for good of this stupid back problem at the same time that’d be awesome.
2. Any chance of some sun?
3. Or some proper emotion? This constant dull nothingness is getting kinda tedious, and it’d be nice to be able to interact properly with my housemates before we have to move out this summer.
4. Do you really have to keep allowing all these bad things happening to people I care about?
5. You’re omniscient, right… so you can explain Maths to me! Nothing more annoying than a smart-arse who sits there being smug and refusing to divulge, though I realise that I’ve probably been guilty of that myself on occasion before. I’m sorry. But I’m really really stuck at the minute, so pretty please? Just some clues.

Yours sincerely, Amen, and PleaseThankYou,

Lucy

Protestation

I don’t want to go back.

Please don’t make me go back.

I don’t want to go back to work, and stress, and panic, and a horrendous set of exams which I’m probably going fail most of anyway, and an essay deadline, and backache, and worse backache, and food shopping stress, and a messy kitchen, and other people being stressed, and being trapped in my room when I’m having a dip, and end of things sadness, and summertime sadness, and small place claustrophobia, and not having any nice bread ‘cos I won’t have time to get any, and pretentious people irritation, and mitigation forms, and having to leave our house, and not enough time, and finalist goodbyes, and no-one there to just talk to ‘cos they’ll all be working, and doctor’s appointments, and counselling appointments, and what do you do in a relationship during third-yr exams?

x

:-(

Health and Safety

In the last week or so I have spent a not inconsiderable amount of time and money on my back, and as a result I am now the proud owner of the following stunning pieces of equipment:

The wireless keyboard and mouse are to enable me to raise my laptop screen to a better height while still allowing me to type and what have you. They didn’t have to be wireless, I’ll be honest, but it does mean one less USB lead to get in the way, and I did the silly thing of reading around too carefully and then falling in love with an out-of-budget-but-oh-so-shiny product. Contrary to my usual judgement in these matters, I went ahead and bought it anyway.

And here we have, ladies and gentleman, boys and girls, the upshot of Lucy vs The-Health-and-Safety-Rules-of-the-Maths-Dept. It is horrendously ugly. One of my housemates remarked that it looked as though I had stolen a car seat (before adding “You’re not Scouse… but you are a Brummie.”). People give me odd looks on the Science Site as it’s not exactly discreet to carry about – although nothing new there, I guess. Yay for spotty rucksacks! – and my own initial assessment was that it looked closer to a piece of prosthetic equipment than anything I’d really rather have in my bedroom. But it is wonderfully comfortable, especially on the chair in the photo, and it makes all but the very worst lecture theatres bearable for the amount of time. Which is something!

Back to Basics

For those of you who don’t know, I have a back problem. It’s a relatively mild back problem, ’tis true, but it’s also a long-term back problem that doesn’t look set to go away any time in the near future. Some days I’m in constant pain from it. Some days I barely feel it at all, but I’m always, always conscious of it as a deciding factor in what I do or don’t do.

Gentle walking helps it. Long car journeys are painful, and I can’t go for longer than an hour at a time without a stretching and walking break. I cope in exams due to qualifying for the ‘physical needs special room’ where you get a stretching time allowance, but lectures can be another thing again*. Theatres and cinemas suck because you can’t even get up in the middle of a performance and the seats are generally horrendously unsupportive even with the aid of the faithful Irma.

I like supportive shoes, adjustable height objects in general, and stairs with an odd number of steps. I dislike most of the British bus network, having to duck to see round a corner in the Corsa that I drive, and stairs with an even number of steps.

But most of all I like Pilates. It’s not something I’d heard of before particularly (other than something which rich gym fanatics did down south), but it was recommended to me a year or so ago and after attending term-time Saturday morning classes with the Yoga Society, I simply haven’t looked back! It is a form of stretching, basically, which centres on balance and core stability. It is very controlled, breathing is important, and the real aim is to improve your overall flexibility – and it is undeniably true that while I always feel most supple just after a session, my whole posture has been transformed over the past year.

Like any exercise, however, you get out of shape if you don’t keep it up. I’ve been feeling pretty achy of late which is probably due to the cumulative effect of a tense, wet, house-bound summer**, so when a family friend mentioned that she had started attending classes at one of the local leisure centres, I figured that I might as well go along and see what it was like. And while I have my doubts about the finer points of the instruction – I would much rather go back to the Durham instructor who has, sadly, now moved away – I am sitting here feeling like something of a new person! Which isn’t bad for an hour’s stretching and £4.90 :-)

x

*, and after I clashed with the Health and Safety rules of the Maths Dept last year over the issue, something that I need to work out for the coming two years…

**, and a four-and-a-half-hour drive back from Derbyshire the other day. That is a ridiculous amount of time given the distance.