Weeks One, Two and Three can be found under these links should you be the kind of weirdo who likes reading about a 52-year-old woman’s adventures with protein, lunges and a stick named Leonora.
The adventures are now over and normal service in the name of evidence-based epistemology and consistently liberal principles will shortly resume.
Wednesday 23rd September
I wake feeling very tired and achy still. My back is particularly painful. I suspect this is going to be a 25% day and that I will be doing a single 15-minute walk and some light stretches. I feel a little fed up and the lodge seems quiet and lonely without the husband. I get dressed stiffly and painfully and make my way downstairs where I make tea and a boiled egg with toast. I decide to eat on the patio to get morning light to lift my mood and place it on the table and return indoors for the teapot. On coming outside again, I find that my toast is missing! How is this possible? I spot the culprit running into the forest and, I presume, laughing at me in squirrel. I yell after him that he has the morals of a seagull, wish some bewildered dogwalkers a polite good morning and return indoors to make more toast.
I am inexplicably cheered by this encounter with a rather adorable thief and set off for my diagnostic 15-minute walk. This is painful at first but my stiffness eases up within about five minutes and the walk turns into a 20-minute one at quite a brisk pace. By the end of it, my back is no longer painful at all and I return home in much better spirits. I upgrade the day to a 50% day which means a success is doing a downgraded version of the optimal plan. I spend a couple of hours writing which improves my mood further. (Should I worry that telling other people why I think they are wrong always seems to cheer me up? It feels like I should)
After lunch, I set off for my second walk with enthusiasm. I can feel the return of my energy and my love of vigorous exercise. I feel alive again and like me again! This feeling lasts for approximately three minutes at which point my body raises a clear protest. My back goes into painful spasms and my heartrate escalates to close to 150 even though I am not moving particularly fast or going uphill. I persevere for another five minutes and then admit defeat and return to the lodge at the pace of a depressed snail.
I vent my frustrations to my AI journal. I still feel energetic! My body both wants to move and is resistant to doing so! How does that work? How can one possibly listen to one’s body when it returns such mixed messages? Chat GPT suggests to me, “Your musculoskeletal recovery hasn’t caught up with your cardiovascular enthusiasm.”
YES!
This, exactly, is the current problem! It is true that my heart and lungs appear to be raring to go while my muscles and joints are much more dubious about the idea. How do I navigate this? Does listening to my body require treating it as a democracy now where every system has a vote but also a veto?
I listen to my body for the rest of the day and rest it and feed it healthily, get in the hot tub and go to bed.
Thursday 24th September
My energy has returned in abundance in the morning and my morning walk, while not quite living up to this promise, returns the information that it feels competent but not exhilarated so today is a 75% day. It will perform all my requests but I should not push my luck. This level of high functioning good because I am again meeting with Matt and in our last two sessions we have been dealing with alleviating significant muscle pain rather than pushing forwards.
Matt is pleased with my improved ability to describe my body’s messages and observes that I do this best when I am describing it as literally having a personality and speaking to me in sentences. He suggests that, as a writer, I make this into a practice and literally speak to my body and imagine it answering me as an enthusiastic labrador, a decrepit sloth, a grumpy old miser eking out capacity or an efficient but uninspired clerk. The man is now just encouraging my insanity.
Matt now announces that on our final week, we will be attempting the main aim of my meeting with him - becoming able to get myself up off the floor unaided. I have been practicing this in the lodge and have become more capable of getting up speedily and efficiently when I have a table to push up on, but not seemingly making any progress at doing so without one. I get myself into a ‘lunge’ position holding onto the bench and lower myself to one knee. Matt shouts to me,
“Look at that!”
“What?”
“You just got your knee onto the mat without a warm up!”
“I did!”
“We spent over a week working on that!”
“Oh, yes. I couldn’t do that for some time, could I?”
“Celebrate!”
“Yay!”
“I hope that’s not sarcastic?’
“Perish the thought.”
After getting myself up and down from my knees with the help of the bench several times, Matt informs me that I do now have the strength to get to my feet without needing to push up with my hands. What is lacking is now balance and confidence. Matt produces a stick. This, he informs me, will give me the balance I need but the strength will all come from my legs. Raise one knee from the mat, lay one hand on it, lean forward over it and then, holding the stick for balance, push myself to my feet. I summon up all my strength and try this. Absolutely nothing happens.
Matt reminds me that I just did this using the bench only for balance so I can do it using a stick in the same way. I try again, My knee lifts about an inch from the mat.
“Are you sure I have the strength to do this?”
“Yes!”
“It doesn’t feel like I do.”
“That’s psychological.”
“I do have a tendency to overthink.”
“My old rugby coach used to have good advice on overthinking….”
“Is it that it hinders performance unnecessarily and when you find yourself doing it, you should make effort not to think but identify the next useful thing to do and focus on the activity of doing it?”
“Yes, actually, very much that.”
I inform him that I am close friends with a certain Clyde Rathbone for whom there is almost no psychological hurdle that cannot be helpfully addressed with reference to rugby and, given that I have presented him with quite a number of them, I am now a positive repository of rugby-related wisdom, much to the bewilderment of my other friends. He tells me that this sounds valuable but am I now talking in order to stall trying again? I am. I make a conscious effort not to overthink, fix my eyes on a poster opposite about the importance of hydration and read it aloud while making my third attempt.
I GET TO MY FEET!!!
At this point, there really should be some kind of inspirational music playing, possibly from Rocky or The Karate Kid (I am old) and I really am celebrating. We try repeating the process with the right leg which is weaker and less coordinated. This is not a success and I only rise a few inches before flopping back down again. Another attempt with the left is similarly unsuccessful. I become frustrated. Matt tells me I need to rest. After five minutes, we try again and two out of three attempts on the left side are successful. I am jubilant. Matt tells me to continue doing the lunging and squatting stretches and have three attempts on each side to get to my feet a day and I will very soon be able to do this reliably with a stick and then without one.
I practically dance out of Matt’s gym. My biggest fear is that I will fall over while I am out in public and not be able to get up. This was starting to make me afraid to leave the house and was the primary reason for this endeavour. Already, I am less afraid of that, because I can get up with a stick.
On the way back, I order myself an attractive wooden stick. This stick will be my starter stick and represent the first achievement on the path to restoring my mobility fully. I call her Leonora. I send Matt a picture of Leonora and tell him I have celebrated. He approves.
When I get back to the lodge, I continue to be in the most optimistic of spirits as I prepare for afternoon tea with Dr Naomi Fisher. She delights me by having exemplary tea etiquette. Three hours pass before we realise it as we find we have many opinions and experiences in common and get lost in conversation. We discover that the many evidence-based, liberally-minded people who agree with us are all sensible and correct while those who oppose our stances are all fatally misguided and often downright unethical.
I see Naomi back to her car and walk back to the lodge. On entering it, I find that I have walked 10,000 steps! The last time I tried this, I collapsed in a heap on my return and was then unable to leave the house for five days but today I feel great. I do my stretching exercises, use the hot tub and go to bed in the most optimistic of spirits. Today I really believe what Matt has been telling me. I am making progress and I will restore my mobility fully.
Today has been an excellent day.
Friday 25th September
I sleep very fitfully and awake at 3AM ravenously hungry. At 4AM, I give up on sleep and make a very early breakfast. I check my fitbit and calorie counter app and find that all the exercise yesterday had given me a calorie deficit of 1,700. This is too high.I have been maintaining an average of 1,250. My body has woken me up in the misguided belief that it is starving and needs to find food. I feed it well and tell it to calm down. I refer it to my waistline and inform it that its fears of starving to death any time soon are melodramatic and not rooted in evidence. It eventually feels reassured on this score and permits me to go back to sleep for a couple of hours.
I wake again and make a commitment not to let the deficit get that large again and also to ensure that I wind down properly after a particularly active day. My body is not forgiving, however. I take it for its diagnostic walk, and following Matt’s advice, think about what its character is today and what it is saying. It is performing its walk but very grudgingly and in a moody silence. I decide that today my body is a sullen teenager who has been taken on a family walk entirely against its will and will trail along behind saying nothing but making its displeasure felt.
I continue to be tired, weak, cold and hungry all day but I determine not to be discouraged by this. This is part of the recovery process and this is a 25% day. I eat healthily, keep warm, read and build my model. I go for a second 15 minute walk in the afternoon and my body performs it grudgingly but without protest. This is progress! I am somewhat heartened by the arrival of Leonora and she comes through for me. Two out of three of my attempts to rise from the floor are successful even when tired.
I still feel a little low, though, and so I call the husband and ask him what he has been up to. He has been undertaking a major project of entirely clearing and reorganising the garden and plans to build a new shed. (It seems I am going to be a shed widow again). I am very pleased to hear of this because it was very overgrown but I feel a pang of frustration again and express it. Our house is in dire need of a good sort out, spring clean and also some redecoration. I have been neglecting it. We devise a plan to work with this to use the three remaining months of the year to revamp the house. We get a bit silly talking about Pluckrose & Pluckrose Home and Garden Renovation. I end the conversation feeling much more organised and productive even though I have not yet done anything! I use the hot tub and go to bed.
Saturday 26th September
A miracle occurs and I sleep for 7.5 hours in a row. This never happens. I feel wonderful but am aware that this has been deceptive before. I take my body for a walk and consult it on the matter. It is skipping along giggling with excitement and enthusiastic about everything. Apparently, my body is a five-year-old child today. This is a 100% day!
I attempt standing with Leonora while I have this much energy, sure that today I will manage every attempt but again I manage to rise on 2 out of 3 attempts. On the third attempt on the left side I only manage to rise halfway before collapsing down again. This is a strength issue. The right side is still not cooperating at all and I text Matt about it. I am not too disheartened by not making the 3/3 and reason with myself that this is first and foremost a functional issue. If I fall over, I only need to be able to get up once and now, as long as I have a stick with me, I can do that. The rest will come.
I intended to write for two hours on people being wrong about bisexuality but they were being very wrong about it so four hours pass. I feel a pang of guilt about this as I did intend to stick to two hours writing a day, but I don’t think I should be too precious about this. The non-negotiable anchors are the healthy diet to facilitate weight loss, the sleep window, the morning walk, the afternoon strength training, the evening stretches and the wind down period. What I choose to do with the rest of my time is up to me.
I go to the gym where the scales inform me that I am now a stone (14lbs) lighter than when I arrived! I pick up handweights equivalent to this and think how much I’d not like to be walking around carrying them all the time and that four weeks ago, I was doing precisely that!
I start my weight’s workout and discover that my body seems to have remembered how to move smoothly and breathe properly since the last time I was here. Today I look far less like a confused and awkward sloth and much more like a heavily overweight, middle-aged woman who nevertheless knows how to use resistance machines. I move through the 8 machines enjoying this and 40 minutes later am feeling a pleasant ache and fatigue in various muscles rather than pain and exhaustion. I am jubilant again. This appears to be a week for turning corners. I move onto the recumbent bike but give this up after 6.5 minutes. It may well be a way to get my heart working but that doesn’t stop it being incredibly tedious. I shall walk to do that at present.
On my way out I inform the charming young gym embryo who was so encouraging last time that I can now get up off the floor with the aid of a stick and he is so excited and happy about this that I am quite touched and consider asking him if he’d like to be adopted. I restrain myself and thank him warmly like a normal person.
I am hopeful that I will again walk all the way back without stopping but I find that this time, I do need to stop at the top of the hill and sit for a couple of minutes to get my breath back. That’s OK. My body has proved itself enough for one day. I get in and immediately consume a large amount of protein and a gallon of tea. A pleasant weariness sets in. This is that comfortable tiredness so different to the exhaustion of anaemia or the weary achiness of simply moving around while fat and deconditioned and I sit and enjoy it with a book until it is time to consume more protein, do my stretches, get in the hot tub and go to bed.
This has been another good day.
Sunday 27th September
I expect this to be a low energy recovery day and it is. I find myself having to stop and sit down between the movements of showering, dressing and making breakfast which irritates me. It also makes me realise that I have not had to do this for the last few days and possibly longer. When I arrived, I had to do that every morning. This cheers me.
My diagnostic walk confirms today as a recovery day. My body whines “I want to goooo hoooome!'“ all the way round the circuit although it does not freak out. It is an overtired and irritable 7-year-old today.
I also appear to be ravenously hungry today. Indoors, my body’s persona transforms from a whiny child to a bear that has just emerged from hibernation and roars at me. I think it may well be that the gym session yesterday properly woke up muscles that have been dormant for some time and what my body wants is protein so I plan meals carefully. The bear is not satisfied and I decide that this is not a case of comfort eating or anxiety eating or managing-sleep-deprivation-eating but a legitimate physiological demand for food. By 11PM, I have had a very boring day of reading, writing, resting, two unhappy walks, some packing and intermittently throwing the bear chicken, fish and eggs to calm it down. My deficit is 500 calories which is fine. I go to bed feeling pleased with myself for handling a hungry, recovery day sensibly and looking forward to the rewards of this the next day.
Monday 28th September
These rewards do not materialise. I sleep less well than usual and wake with a headache. On getting out of bed, I find myself suffering from vertigo. I sit down again involuntarily. I try again to get up and make it to the bathroom even though I feel as though I am on a ship on a rough sea and manage to wash my face and brush my teeth. Getting dressed is difficult because, in trying to put my socks on, I keep missing my feet. I try to have a sense of humour about this but I also feel exhausted.
I make it downstairs carefully and make myself tea and breakfast. I sit down and check through my piece on bisexuality and go out onto the patio where I have an intermittent mobile signal and publish it. I soon come in again because it is too bright. It becomes clear that I need to go back to bed and I make my way upstairs again and fall into a deep sleep for two hours.
I awake feeling a little better but I am also angry! This is just not fair! I have done all the right things to have a good day today! I was counting on a good day. This is my last day to myself before I go home and I was planning to go to the gym again, consolidate my confidence with the weight machines and see how I go on the rowing machine. I did so well on Saturday. I recovered properly yesterday. I dealt with extreme hunger sensibly. I deserve to have a good day today. I recognise that this is childish and just not how anything works even as I am thinking it but that does not stop me thinking it. I have a benign cyst on my brainstem that makes me epileptic and have episodes of migraine, imbalance, incoordination, double vision and headaches. On three occasions, it has caused a limited stroke-like incident and damaged nerves to the right side of my body but mostly my head. I have mostly learnt how to manage and cope with this but sometimes it really pisses me off.
I check in to Substack and see responses to my piece. Most are positive but a few disagree with some aspects of it which is normal and also interesting. A couple of people have missed the point and are arguing with things I did not say and a handful are arguing with the title, having clearly not read the piece in which I addressed their objection. I become very irritable and am inclined to argue with them at length. I respond to a couple who seem in good faith and then force myself to ignore. I scroll Substack and see other people making points with which I want to argue. This would be a productive way to distract myself from today’s enfeeblement, right? I also check the resort’s takeaway menu. It is actually quite difficult for me to move about and cook today and I do intend to allow myself a treat day every now and then. If I am going to miss out on my plans today and be confined to the sofa, I can at least enjoy a burger and some online interaction, right?
No.
No, no, no, no, no.
This is the trap. I know how this goes. I feel unwell. I get fed up. I go online to distract myself. I eat junk. I do not move or get fresh air. I get into pointless arguments. I neglect my sleep hygiene and because I have been sitting, staring at a screen all day, I do not become normally tired and stay up late, usually eating more junk. Then I feel unwell the next day too so I repeat this pattern. Arguing with people online can be valuable and treat nights are good for sustaining a healthy eating plan but they must be done for genuine interest and enjoyment, not distraction and consolation.
Perhaps today need not be a total loss, after all? I can practice doing the right things in response to a day of illness? Yes, OK, Pollyanna. Let’s not get carried away. I spend the afternoon drinking tea, resting, eating well and working on adapting this week’s diary for publication on Wednesday (Hello!). This is a genuinely absorbing activity that does not carry the risks of getting into online arguments and eating junk. I find that this does help and my irritation subsides. I am even laughing at some of my own jokes, which I’m sure is a sign of latent narcissism.
I am up to Sunday when I feel the shift. It is as though a balloon which had been inflated to the degree of pressing against my skull suddenly deflates. It typically takes anything from ten minutes to an hour and today it takes about twenty minutes. The pressure drops, my eyes start to feel as though they are moving more easily and together, the ground beneath me seems to steady and my limbs start reliably doing as they are told. It is as though my brain has decided to relax. I stand up and test this. Yes, I am better. I feel completely normal. I have energy.
I look at the time. It has just gone 7PM and it is almost dark. I put my shoes on and grab my headphones and set out for a gentle walk. The walk begins gently but I have a lot of unspent energy and I pick up my pace and spend 40 minutes speeding up and down the hills of the resort listening to metal and I feel great. I get back in and make dinner while still listening to music and doing a little dance in the kitchen.
I spent the evening working on my model which I can now do because my coordination is back and feeling in a thoroughly good mood. Did I help that episode pass off quickly by resting, eating healthily and distracting myself in a relaxing way? I cannot know. They are so variable. But I did not respond to it in an unhealthy way and jeopardise tomorrow’s productivity anyway. I am absurdly pleased with myself about that.
On the whole, and strangely, this has been a good day too.
Tuesday 29th September
I sleep well but wake to find that my FitBit has died completely. This throws me into something of a panic. Do steps and zone minutes even contribute to weight loss and fitness if nothing is measuring them? I order myself another one and mentally slap myself. I come down the stairs feeling energetic and strong. I’m glad I have capacity today. It’s going to be a busy one. I have my final meeting with Matt, I need to pack and dispose of all rubbish, get my diary up to date and finish the model.
Disposing of the rubbish takes two trips to communal bins and 15 minutes so I decide to treat this as my morning diagnostic walk. My body is in Labrador mode again today, as it was last night and I tell it it is a Good Girl. It is! Today is a 100% day. Nice. I pack the rest of my stuff and squeeze it into my suitcase which it fills. How is this possible? I sent the husband home with at least half of my stuff and I’ve only bought two books, two tops, a pair of gym trousers and a stick. This confirms my hypothesis that ‘stuff’ expands to be slightly too much for the capacity you have for it, just as time and money are always not quite enough.
I bring the diary up to date and set off up the hill to meet the cab that will take me to Matt. Matt is happy with the progress I have made with getting up off the floor with the aid of a stick and informs me that, even though it does not feel like it, I am close to being able to do so relying on the right leg. In order to strengthen this one, the sadist (I am sending him this tomorrow. Hi, Matt!) insists on me trying one-legged squats while hanging onto a strap affixed to the wall. When performed by me, this exercise could more rightly be called ‘one-legged stagger-flops’ but he is happy with them. He is respectful of Leonora and this makes me happy. I thank him for his services in guiding me on getting going again and he congratulates me on excellent progress.
Back at the lodge, I recover from this renewed assault on my quads with several gallons of tea and then I put the final touches on the model. It is slightly wonky and a couple of pieces are the wrong way round, but I think this adds character. I have loved building this. I’m not actually terribly efficient at it. The box says it should take 12 hours but it has taken me at least 40. I was planning to leave it here. I enjoy the process more than the end product. But I find I am quite attached to it. It feels symbolic, somehow. It was coming together at the same time my plans for fixing myself, losing weight and restoring my mobility were. I built it as I was rebuilding me. It is coming home with me.
I spend the evening doing the final bits of packing for my departure first thing in the morning and then wallow around in the hot tub, reflecting on these four weeks. They have achieved precisely what I intended them to which is not always the case with the best laid plans. I had been at risk of becoming housebound due to serious limitations to my mobility and a growing fearfulness of falling over and being unable to get up. These weeks were intended to reverse that trajectory and they were both painful and frightening at times - I have cried more in the last four weeks than in the last four years - but I have achieved that. I still have a long way to go but I have a solid base of strength, stamina and stability to build from now.
The changes I have made over the last four weeks have been both physical and psychological. I began them fighting an inner conviction that I was not ever going to recover from the major blood loss of last December, that I was now set on the path of being a weak, disabled, fearful and vulnerable old lady whose future prospects included only decline, disability and death. My rational brain knew this was nonsense. I am 52. I have another couple of decades before I need to seriously worry about age-related infirmity. If I were an elite athlete or a model, I might have to accept that my peak performance were behind me, but I am a writer. My work can continue to improve. I can read more, think more, write more, travel more and speak more for decades to come. I can hope to influence public thought in a more rational and liberal direction and maybe even leave a legacy of writing for future generations of empiricists, rationalists, humanists and liberals. It is quite possible that my most influential piece of writing is one I have not written yet. I told myself all this repeatedly and yet I could not feel that it was true. My greatest fear, and that of my husband, was that I was losing my zest for life and giving up.
The reality is that I am just very physically deconditioned and very fat. I have spent many months mostly lying down dealing with the effects of major blood loss and severe anaemia and overeating from boredom and frustration. I have a tendency to interpret physical issues impacting me as philosophical problems needing to be solved intellectually rather than material realities needing to be addressed with practical action. Rather than lying about contemplating mortality, the cruelty of aging and the inevitable decline of every living organism, I needed to stop eating junk and go for a walk. Every day. For months. These four weeks focusing only on my physical health were the first difficult step in doing precisely that and they have been effective. My strength and my energy are returning and with them, my optimism, my joy, my future-orientation and my zest to get out in the world and do things.
I inform myself with confidence that I am not yet a feeble and decrepit old lady and when I am an old lady, I will not be feeble and decrepit. I will get my strength and energy back. I will be fit, strong and formidable. I will embrace my middle-age by developing the persona of a crone and thoroughly enjoying it. I shall be outspoken, argumentative, uncompromising, unapologetic, unashamedly eccentric and utterly fearless in my fight for the future of Enlightenment values and liberal democracy.
I will celebrate each milestone towards health and vitality with a new, increasingly ornate stick. I want one made of ebony with a silver death’s head handle and silver snakes running down its length. That would go beautifully with the big biker boots with flames and skulls on them that make me 6 ft 1, and which I will never stop wearing along with my steampunk hats and the deep red lipstick in the shade of the dried blood of my enemies. My hair is still mostly near-black but it has silver streaks in it now. I might grow that out and accentuate it. In fact, Leonora and her future sisters are not mere ‘sticks’. They are staffs. Irrationalism and illiberalism? YOU. SHALL. NOT. PASS!
Yes, this all sounds good to me, but for now, I must clamber awkwardly out of the hot tub where I am becoming prunelike, take my vitamins and get an early night because tomorrow is going to be a long day of travelling back to London where the second phase of my restoration is to begin.
ONWARDS!
Love this! So honest, helpful and humorous. Thanks for sharing.
Go get it lass!!!
(By it, I mean life and the illiberal arguments swirling around the globe)
Hope you're genuinely sitting with the feeling of comfort that you are lifting yourself up in more ways than one.