A year on from Radiotherapy

It was last May, May 21st to be exact that I had my first day of radiotherapy to treat Ledderhose with Dr Shaffer in Guildford. To see more about that see here Day 1.

The year since I started that treatment has been emotional, productive, joyful, annoying, brilliant and well it has been an up and down year. 

From the point of view of my foot it has been a massive success. I have gone from strength to strength and gone from using a stick to walking to running, I have gone from constant pain with sharp stabbing pains, to some pain to being almost pain free even after running.

That is right RUNNING. I am currently doing the Couch 2 5K plan and that means I am up to week 7 which means I am running for 25 minutes, a year ago I could barely walk but now I am now running for  25 minutes. My foot does not hurt afterwards and I am losing weight. I have to admit to getting a bit emotional after the first long run (20 minutes) as I had come so far.

I have also going from being able to play no badminton, about the only thing it turned out I was actually missing to passing the first qualification on my way to becoming a coach. 

I don't plan on being a coach full time as although I gave up the PhD due to the demands on my foot and I am still happy that I did that as standing can still hurt and being off of my foot has helped. Giving up the PhD led to me getting my new job which I am really enjoying, the people I work with have similar interests to me, the company is great and everything seems to be moving along nicely there. 

There are more important things in my life than my foot and although I am still trying to maintain this blog and be a useful trustee for the BDS other things do take over. 

As regular readers will know my wife was pregnant (a post to come on that soon!!!!) but she had an awful pregnancy (and labour wasn't great) which I am not going to cover here as I would like to give it the page space I feel it is due. But I happy that pregnancy is over, not just because I got my wife back and a daughter out of it so there is a chance that both my wife and I could be healthy at the same time for the first time since we got married over 15 months ago. Our marriage what with my foot and her pregnancy has been through a shocking amount in that time, we have both had to give up jobs due to illness, we have both had illnesses which the NHS are pathetic at treating and have therefore ended up very frustrated, we have been through the depression and pain associated with these conditions but we are coming out of it stronger and together. 

I know I would have struggled to get through the past 2 years without my wife (my family would have been great but it's not quite the same) and I know she says the same about me over the last 9 months.

More to come on the baby soon and hopefully some new Ledderhose news other than my recovery, I certainly have some interesting lines of enquiry to pursue.