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Report from the front line …

Hello.

I haven’t troubled the scorers in the ongoing unofficial Rust contributors ‘most prolific poster’ competition for a while.

Nevertheless, I am happy to return to the fray this morning, hard on the heels of the news that Jo Pavey, the 47 year old middle distance runner, will be attempting to qualify for her sixth Olympics at postponed Tokyo Olympiad next year – assuming it takes place, of course.

Furthermore, this is the way I see it.

If Captain – sorry honourary Colonel – Tom can high-tail it up and down his garden a hundred or so times with his zimmer frame and thereby qualify for ‘national icon’ status and a Spitfire fly-past, then surely it is beholden upon everybody over a certain age to do their bit.

Here’s an update upon my quest at the age of sixty-eight to prove something, even if I’ve temporarily forgotten what it is:

Regular readers will recall that over time I have been presented with a set of complicating factors that has hampered my project to represent my country at an elite sport should the call come.

My gymnasium/health club burning to the ground.

Long term accumulated issues with my left foot, including a callous that my podiatrist has informed me is inevitable, untreatable but possibly manageable.

An Achilles tendon in my right leg that, weakened by past injuries, I managed to ‘yank’ when, on a whim, foolishly attempting a jogging session on a newly-laid out rugby pitch that I happened to come across a mile from my home last September and which as a result is now beset by chronic inflammation.

Never mind the Covid-19 problem, at 8.00pm last night I emerged outside my gaff and banged my oversized wok with a serving spoon to salute not only the wonderful NHS medical staff working in intensive care units up and down the country but the very organisation itself.

In the past fortnight I have been contacted by my local specialist physiotherapy unit which then – in the context of the lockdown strictures upon the nation – arranged me a ‘phone consultation’ which began, to my amazement and delight as someone who prides himself upon his punctuality, with a call from my allotted physio within ten seconds of the agreed hour of 11.00am one morning.

This took an hour. Said physio was to the point, dynamic and most helpful. She listened to my symptoms, posed follow-up questions and then told me a few facts of life.

My errant Achilles was causing problems because my past rupture of it – plus my right hip replacement four years ago – had placed upon it additional pressure/strain.

By knocking out between 12,000 and 23,000 steps (currently averaging within a whisker of 17,500) per day, I was overdoing it and thereby causing it to protest. She advised I should average no more than 10,000 to 12,000 per day and was to curtail my daily expeditions as soon as the tendon became uncomfortable.

As we finished she said she would send me some stretching exercises – and these duly arrived via email within half an hour.

I was to do these daily but not to expect any tangible results for six to eight weeks.

I was also told to ring her immediately if and as I had any queries or issues arising from my Achilles.

If there was no improvement within three months – and the Government’s revised lockdown stipulations permitted it – I would be called in for a face-to-face consultation.

I think I’m in love.

(That said, I haven’t done my exercises daily, only when I remember – and I don’t any longer do one of them, involving prancing about with a large rubber band constraining me at the knees, because I feel I look a prat doing it, but please don’t tell my physio).

Then on Monday last, out on my daily exercise hike, I was contacted my someone who announced she would like to come around to my apartment – at a social distance – to drop off some medical items or another. There was plenty of traffic going by me at the time and I didn’t quite register which part of the NHS was contacting me, or indeed what equipment she was referring to.

Back home – and would you believe it – again exactly at the appointed hour of 6.00pm, my doorbell rang and a middle-aged lady left me a large envelope at a distance.

It turned out she was from the podiatry unit and the package contained a pair of shoe ‘inner’ pads, the left one moulded to exactly surround and support my giant callous which regularly has to be ‘ground down’ and padded with Elastoplast to prevent me aggravating it.

Hats off to our wonderful NHS, I say!

(Tokyo 2021 here we come – event as yet to be decided!) …

 

 

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About Gerald Ingolby

Formerly a consumer journalist on radio and television, in 2002 Gerald published a thriller novel featuring a campaigning editor who was wrongly accused and jailed for fraud. He now runs a website devoted to consumer news. More Posts