That hurt

Now I can talk about it without freaking myself out. Yesterday was X-ray and ultrasound day, confirming the miserable diagnosis. Yes, the bursae behind the Achilles tendon is swollen, tender, and full of new blood cells. I don't understand enough to get why this last is bad but it is. So, after two years of limping around and not getting better, they told me it would be best to inject said bursal sack with steroids. This hurt like hell, and had me almost passing out. They didn't warn me that it would be so painful, but they did tell me it would be worse today. And it is.

We have a mate staying, and enjoyed a little meat fondue last night, plus the champagne we had saved to toast the year in together, and a little rather tasty wine, so, yes, the rest of me is tender too, though coca cola and naproxen are soothing away my sins. I can hardly put any weight on the foot at all. The doctor told me to just do as little as possible for two weeks. I need some kind of walking stick... actually I could do with a crutch, just to keep the foot off the ground completely. But, even if I could find a crutch, I would feel like a pitiful fraud using one. I am just wondering if there is anywhere, maybe a second hand shop in town, where I could get a decent stick for the weekend. We don't intend to do much tromping, but I hate the idea of my foot being a consideration for R and A.

Phobia aside, my fears for yesterday were all centred around tales of tendon rupture. The doc assured me that this might be an issue for athletes and racehorses, but I should be all right. Wandering around a stately home should be OK if I take my time... The real scare stories came from Mum, whose reaction to the possibility of an injection was, shall we say, less measured than one would hope but as dramatic as one might expect. She wants me to refuse an injection and instead to juice up and drink greens to remove heavy metals and other toxins from my body as per the advice of her online guru for all things medical, Frank Suarez, some famous nutritionist who fell to his doom out of a ninth storey window last year. I haven't told her this last, it would just upset her. I wish she would show me the same sort of care, all she does is add to my terrors. So I have reached an unpleasant conclusion: from now on I must simply lie to her about these things. Even before she was ill, she bordered on neurosis about matters of health, now it's one of her defining features, and the pressure, when it is something I am already unhappy about, is too intense.

I say this, great intentions and all that, but I probably won't do it. It's hard for me to explain, but that's early training for you. What I will do is avoid Mum until my friend has gone home, and then break it to her as gently as possible.

Then what she will do is raise some batsh*t clamour for days.