Stuff and Pain management for Ledderhose

So I looked today and realised that it has been 5 days since I posted and whilst this site pretty much maintains itself now (I had more visitors / pageviews in the last 5 day period than ever before) I am still aware that I there are many things that I would like to say to keep people updated. 

Leaving the PhD: 

So first all I want to say thank you to everyone who I have spoken to about this, everyone who has understood how impossible this decision has been for me to make and how much people agreeing with what I have decided to do makes thing easer. I had to have a chat with the head of doctoral studies at the university today and actually things went really well. He was really nice and it seemed like he was genuinely sorry for me but understood that any job that requires standing and walk is now impossible for me (his words). But out of this came that I may in fact, as others have suggested, be able to write up for an MPhil (equivalent of a masters) and this would at least mean that I have a qualification to show for the last 2 1/2 years. 

Moving on:  

As you might guess from the picture below I am trying to head into computing or some such career like it. So far I have looked into Data Analysis as this is an area in which I have a large amount of experience in from dealing with masses of scientific data. I am also interesting in programming and this is something that I have started teaching myself. I have had interviews and I am waiting to hear back, either way I have gained lots of good experience from going through the processes which will benefit me for next time. 

Pain management for Ledderhose: 

So as anyone who reads hear often will know I suffer severe pain with my Ledderhose and this is increased greatly when I have been walking or standing and therefore I am trying to stay off of my feet but it is  still bad. I have chatted now with a GP who WILL listen, in fact he was great and asked for the whole story and I have also spoken again to Dr Shaffer. I was given 2 different ways of dealing with the pain and I will let you take away from it what you will. 

Pain management option 1:

One suggestion was to build up the pain killers in my body, that by taking paracetamol 2 tablets 3 times a day which is supplemented by 2 tablets of my cocodamol before going to bed that I might be able to reduce the amount of daily pain that I suffer with. This plan also included taking ibuprofen when it gets back as this should take away any inflammation and this might then help to reduce pain. 

Pain management option 2:

So the second option that I was told about to to take something like amitriptyline which can be used as a pain killer. This works different to normal pain killers and are more aimed at hitting the nerves although their precise mechanism of function in pain relief is currently unclear. This was suggested as it could be that my Ledderhose is so painful because the fibroma is pushing on a nerve ad therefore this type of pain relief may be of more benefit to me than standard pain killers. 

So at the moment I have the choice of which to try, as I have tried option 1 before, true only for weeks, I have decided to give option 2 a go for now. I am only taking 10mg which is nothing but I am also reducing my work load so I am coming more and more off of my feet and of course this does mean that the pain is coming down.

I think that the guy that I spoke to today who said that a job which requires you to be on my feet is now impossible hit the nail bang on the head, my foot just cannot cope with that treatment any more and it aggravates it greatly which means this needs to be avoided. So if anyone has a job with good career prospects, ideally in Sussex, that doesn't pay too badly the feel free to get in touch as I might know someone who is interested.