Badminton Coaching

As everyone should know the primary goal of this blog is to help Ledderhose patients, but at the start it was about my day to day problems with the condition, so I still like sharing my experiences etc.

And I am happy to say that since I got radiotherapy been on the path towards becoming a badminton coach, I always loved playing badminton and it was on my list of things I missed when I could barely walk. The plan for this badminton coaching is just something I can do for a couple of hours at the weekend and hopefully make a little bit of money. I am happy to say that at the weekend I passed the final coaching exam and yesterday I was informed I had passed the 1st aid course; one of the requirements for being a coach is having basic first aid skills.

I am really enjoying being back on my feet and back on the badminton court, I hope that my wife doesn't mind me going on about badminton too much but the fact I couldn't play so long is partly why I am so excited, that and it is great to have passed the final assessment and now be a fully qualified coach. I am lucky that she has been so supportive and has been a great Guinea Pig with her game improving steadily. Whilst I am not going to push the sport on Amelia I hope that me being a qualified coach means I can make the sessions fun enough that she is at least going to be interested for a while. 

I am going to start a blog on badminton as well, but my priority (as far as blogs go) will still be this blog, after all it is not a big problem if people have a delay in getting better at badminton but a patient contacting me about this condition could be feeling quite lost and lonely. 

All the best and watch out for the 100,000 page-views post coming soon. 

The new year

It has been a while since I last posted and as I have explained this is likely to be the case due to decreased problems with my foot and because there is already a lot of content on here, I am still happy to be contacted and I am still going to update as and when I can, although life is keeping me busy at the moment.

So this is actually my first post of the new year.... What has happened since last time I posted? 

• We have had the 20 week ultrasound scan and found out we are having a girl :-) Everything looked great and I have felt her kick. 
• I have been using the stick less and less and have not had to use it at all since the New Year, this includes after having played badminton for an hour. 
• I have been contacted by several people asking for help, hopefully I have helped them. 
• We are continuing work at the BDS and are hoping to make lots of improvement and hopefully they will results in greater donations and therefore we can do more. 

I think that it is really, but I like to keep everyone updated, basically my foot is still improving and my legs / ankles etc are hurting less and less as I continue to reduce stick usage. I am now 6 months post radiotherapy.

All the best to everyone.

Update on things

So this is an update on how things are for me at the moment with regards to my foot and everything involving the foot, I am really busy at the moment with lots of different things and as I have previously said the amount of updates coming on here was due to decrease anyway: 

So the foot in general is not causing me too much pain although I have suffered on a few occasions. Last weekend we went to the allotment and I was doing a lot of walking and carrying and all of this not in my trainers with orthotics but in bog standard wellies and after playing badminton on the Friday. Needless to say that my foot ached on the Monday after such a busy weekend but I could still walk on it! Compare that to a few months ago, well it is gradually getting more and more months ago, but still. 

I think that last weekend is a great example of how far I have come from 4 months or so ago when I finished radiotherapy and couldn't barely walk,. as last week I managed to: 

• Play badminton - I lasted the whole hour against a mix of opponents and only suffered from some hip pain, the foot was not painful but as I was wearing running trainers my ankle suffered a little. Importantly I won all 3 doubles games. 
• Walked a long way: Now this is debatable as who knows what counts as a long way, but it was a long way for me and it was without the stick and I was often carrying heavy bags of compost. I was walking and carrying in wellies for a long time and my foot was not as big of a problem as my ankle, this is huge progress. 

Ok so that is it but they are two pretty huge things that I was able to do last week, who would have thought it, I never thought that I would be back playing badminton before Christmas and not playing too badly at that, I am also back not using the stick quite regularly and can even walk up and down muddy hills without the biggest concern being my foot. If you have this condition there is hope and there is a chance you could improve. You can help others find this site by hitting the plus 1 on the right and by helping the British Dupuytren's Society raise money without having to donate by signing up (very quickly) and using Everyclick / Give as you live.

In other foot news I also got some new orthotics last week, think that it was Thursday that I picked them up. They are basically the same as the last ones I got (see HERE) with some extra inwards tilt on the right foot to try and get me walking normally again. I must say that I think I am starting to get used to them but that they are different, to start with I can feel the pressure going down on the outside of my left foot (my bad foot) and this is probably because of the extra tilt that is trying to force it to go the other way and with time this will happen.

That's all for now!

Anyone wants to get in touch then please do so by e-mail, Facebook group, twitter or just by commenting on here.

A little update on how what has happened since I last posted:

Well for regular visitors I would like to ask a favour, particularly if you are in the UK and a Ledderhose patient or if you are a Dupuytren's patient worldwide.

 Dr Chris Bainbridge, a specialist in the UK, who has done work with Xiapex amongst other things has contacted me directly and told me that he is currently running a survey for Dupuytren's patients which you can find here: https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/Dupuytrens_disability_survey

Please fill this out as who knows something useful might come from this.

He is also considering looking into the application of Xiapex in the treatment of Ledderhose disease, this is something that I am not aware of having been tried before but was something that I was looking at back when I was considering my options.  I came to the conclusion that although it might be useful it is not something I want to try because reports suggest that the treatment should work better on the cord than a lump and with Ledderhose the lump is the main problem and with Dupuytren's treatment there has been feedback that there is often swelling and I doubt this would be nice in the foot.

Now I know I have not really sold it but if this is something that you would be interested in then please either get in contact with Chris Bainbridge who needs enough interested parties before considering it or you can contact me and I will pass you name and contact details on to him.  

I have also played a much harder game of badminton and although the foot itself did not hurt too much there were consequences of me playing again. The main problem with my play was that I was finding moving around the court harder and not because of pain but as it turns out because I was shifting my weight onto my right leg this of course is still an instinct from having been in so much pain. I still won but I have had a lot of pain in my right leg for the two days since playing. Hopefully a new pair of orthotics and a new pair of trainers and I will be well on my way to full recover. 

2 days until a year since my first post. 

No Phyio? DIY walking repair

Shorter post today on my trip to the doctors this morning. I went to see the GP to get referred for physiotherapy as although my foot has not been hurting I have been struggling to walk due to other pains cropping up where I have become dependent on the stick. The Dr told me that it will likely take at least  3 months for me to get an appointment to have physio so my best bet for now is to try and lean myself off of the stick and to try and walk further and further without it without have the issues mentioned above. 

I am still preparing for a gentle return to badminton and today I got some new badminton trainers, well actually they are squash trainers but from what I have read on the internet the difference is not all that great and I was happy to get them for the price I did as the badminton ones were at least double the price. The reason though that I did not get the badminton specific ones is because none of them were wide enough to fit my orthotics inside. 

I will wear them with light socks when I go outside so as not to scare everyone away.

5 things I don't really miss?

It has almost been a year since I started this blog, in fact my first post was made on 14 November so it is under a month until my first birthday. The success of the blog has far exceeded my expectation but perhaps that is something I will talk about in the 1 year post that I'll try to remember to do. But for today I want to look back at a post that I made in my second week of blogging. The post was entitled 5 things I miss and can be found here - 5 things I miss.

I was thinking about this list the other day because I really can't think of anything that I particularly miss from back before this all started and was not sure if that was because it has been going on so long that I had forgotten or because I do not miss these things because they are no longer important or because I can do them again now so here is the list: 

"1) Going for walks with the Mrs (along the beach)

2) Going for a run (on the treadmill)

3) Playing Badminton (I used to play for my local team)

4) Not having to worry in advance whether I am going to have to walk too much. For example I am going to a wedding in December at which I have been told there will be lots of singing but I am not going to be able to stand for that length of time.

5) Not feeling bad about myself, I loved, well I liked to do the work around the house for the Mrs, I still try my best but she is very caring and won't let me do too much now without telling me off, that's right a Mrs who moans at you when you do housework."

The list was compiled whilst I was on quite a low so hence such a bad tone to it and that is the thing that strikes me straight away, how much I was letting it get to me, some of this was understanding and some of it was just not knowing what to do but still onto looking at the list:  

1) I can now go for walks and with the stick these can be for quite a long time, to be honest I didn't miss them that much anyway as I still got to spend good quality time with my wife playing cards and watching TV etc. 

2) I still can't run and this is something that I do still miss but not that much, I can at least now walk on a treadmill and I can cycling probably for longer than I could when all of this started. 

3) Playing badminton is something that I miss greatly but hope to get back into it soon and hopefully I can take some coaching courses and will be able to make up for my lack of being able to play to my best my teaching loads of people how to play, at least that is the hope. Who knows if all goes well I should be able to make a little pocket money, teach the kid(s) and I have a blog and perhaps a website planned to work on this over the next couple of years. I am thinking of calling a badminton blog, Yoda Badminton as when thinking of me returning to the court I thought of me walking up with my stick and then jumping onto the court and beat all my friends (sorry guys but it is true) and this reminded me of Yoda in Star Wars hobbling along with his stick and then jumping around to fight the dark side. 

4) Basically the same as number 1, although I still don't want to walk too far I can walk if I need to with the stick and get quite far. 

5) How things have changed, with my wife suffering from severe morning sickness I am doing almost everything (though I doubt to the stand of my wife)... anyone fancy doing some hoovering or ironing some shirts then please let me know. 

So it is far to say that I am in a much better place physically and also mentally and hopefully when my one year blogversary comes round I can think that actually it may have been a painful year but it was certainly productive and I haven't really lost that much at all, I mean look at what I have gained I am now married with a baby on the way, I couldn't be happier and I think that says it all.