Fuck you Kidney, time to take positive action aka – My 100 Happy Days Number 1

Look at how small these fuckers are. Piss crystals.

Those of you who actually read this blog, might remember that my left kidney decided that it was fed up and created a small piss crystal, also known as a kidney stone. That was back on October 17th, 2014. At some point I passed it but by that point the damage was done and I’m now on a long-term pain management course. Fucking brilliant.

The knock-on effect of that has been that I haven’t done any exercise above a slow walking pace since last year, nearly 8 months of enforced inactivity. Today, as I was driving along the gloriously sunlit A35, congratulating myself for getting two medical practices to sign up for an SCR viewing project (I was only expecting one, and it’s a long way to Bournemouth and back), I decided I needed to say ‘fuck you kidney’ and get on with life.

I’m actually getting on full stop. I’m 42 this year, and everything about me is basically falling to pieces. Speak to any of my mates, especially Darren O’Gorman, and you’ll be weeping in sympathy as our active and somewhat contact-sports filled younger lives catch up with us in ways we would have laughed at previously. Admit, you youngsters reading this, you’ve laughed – inwardly or outwardly – as you’ve repeatedly hook kicked some old fart in the head. I know I did. But when you’re the old fart, it hits hard.

Tonight, I decided that I would go for a short run. I didn’t set myself any goals apart from 1) survive 2) don’t call the missus and ask her to pick me up 3) survive. And so, GPS on one arm, Zombies! Run! on the other, I set off.

The first thought I had was ‘Christ, my ankle is weak, ow.’ followed by ‘huh this isn’t too bad, downhill.’ which was then closely followed by ‘where the fuck did all this mucus come from?’ Pride didn’t come in to it. If I was getting too tired, I would drop the pace to a slow amble, or a crawl. Once I finally got to the stage where I thought ‘People do this for FUN?’ I would head back home.

As it was, before the rivers of mucus, and threatening tide of vomit came, I made it back home. According to my Garmin, I ran/jogged/stumbled/walked/crawled whilst weeping, the grand total of … 2.76km in 19:04. My km per minute was 6:55, which I must say I’m bloody chuffed with, because the fastest time I ever recorded was 5:29, nearly two years ago.

Result? This is one of my happy 100 days. I’m not sure if I can do 100 days in a row and blog about them, or even do 100 days in a row since if my kidney’s being a bastard, I can’t genuinely say ‘Yay, I’m happy’. Because I won’t be. I’m looking forward to having another tomorrow. Maybe.