The pain is a long story

Take pain in its stride

I am beginning to think my tolerance of pain is unhealthy as I endure agony with a sense of normalcy that should be anything but. At this point, this condition can only be considered congenital; I have had it for as long as I can remember.

It is not chronic enough to be an everyday thing; it comes as an affliction that could last more than a day, for which there is little remedy I know of apart from copious amounts of sweet milky tea and a good bed rest.

From about 3:00 AM this morning, I have suffered waves of stomach/abdominal pain, sometimes it is quite severe, I groan with a scrunched-up face, grabbing hold of my belly or just folding my arms tightly over my midriff, to ease the discomfort.

Probably get this looked into

It usually subsides after a while, and it could be accompanied by a diarrhoeal situation or not, but today, nothing of the sort accompanied it apart from an early afternoon feeling that I was about to develop a fever, and it must have been anxiety rather than reality.

Lying on my back did bring some comfort, and then another wave of pain swept through, almost like I was in an endurance activity. Eventually, I took some paracetamol with codeine in the hope that the waves of pain might be reduced in intensity.

As I wrote about this 16 years ago and every few years this thing returns like with a vengeance, maybe it is just time for have a battery of tests to properly understand why this thing rears its ugly head so inconveniently to my utter discomfort and discomfiture, that I had to cancel meetings than present myself to the scrutiny and concern of others who might think it is a lot more serious than it seems.

Blog - I remember this tummy ache (October 2007)

Blog - Knowing pain is personal (August 2021)

The 39 steps from looking fit

On the length of the tape

On seeing how a lady dropped the flab to a trim look, I could not help but be a little more serious about what I want to achieve with regards to fitness. Now, I have always been concerned about my tummy though it never occurred to me how out of shape I was.

Maintaining a 32” waist has not been that difficult, though when I had cancer, that shrunk to below 30” that all my trousers looked like big brother hand-me-downs. What shocked me was when I measured my girth at my belly button, I was not expecting to see 39”, I thought it would be at least 3” less.

Science the reality

Overnight, I had decided to get a Honor Band 5 which includes a heart rate monitor, a step counter, a sleep monitor, an exercise tracker and many more features I am yet to determine. I thought it would be useful to keep tabs on fat burning and how I sleep.

After trying to install exercise apps without much success or motivation to find out their usefulness, I realised I could get good enough information first from WebMD and our own NHS. I do a lot of brisk walking and I can follow the basic fitness videos. [NHS: Exercise]

Know my vitals

I won’t be dieting or calorie counting, I would eat moderately, cut out the unnecessary, increase my intake of water and put in hours of walking before going to bed exhausted with the aim that all aching muscles recover by the morning.

Critically, I need to find out how well I sleep and if there are things, I could do to get more relaxing and longer sleep. I need to see my weight drop along with the inches of lard. I have my work cut out.

Trends come and go

I am not trendy by half

Sometimes we find ourselves in places where we are observers of people, times, events and trends. One could not help but notice when a group of people probably in their late teens or early twenties got on the bus I was on in Barcelona.

They were all wearing sunglasses, well sunglasses with huge frames that more or less gave the raccoon effect. It was quite amusing as well as interesting.

I would not call myself trendy, in fact, I have never had opportunity to be trendy and probably that is a thankful situation and less of a burden on my psyche of trying to keep up with what is IN or discarding of what is OUT.

Wearing out of fashion

I remember in times past when my father sometimes complained of that fact, somehow, I always appeared in his office in traditional apparel of no significant fashion value.

My mother who always did the shopping on my behalf to the extent that there were times she bought my shoes because we had the same size when I was 11 did get some good stuff but that meant I was wearing what was probably 2 years out-of-fashion.

You will have to excuse the pun that I never really cottoned on and anytime I tried to follow the trends I just felt frustrated by the exercise that I gave up.

This is even more evident in the fact that you cannot get a decent pair of wearable jeans – I admit – everyone who wears what is in vogue seems to like what they have.

Royalty

Princess Anne once had the indignity of having worn something for an occasion so many years before and then having worn it again, the fashionistas had a field day. It is an impossible world that if you are famous you can only wear clothes like a wedding dress, once for the event and then passing it on.

Basically, the expensive dress would self-destruct after one outing.

Dancing the night away

The biggest social event when I was in secondary school was the Literary Day; there was nothing literary about the day apart from the expectation of attending the one-off disco, very much like the much-popularised American proms.

That meant we were allowed to dress up in clothes other than the regimental school or hostel uniform. As my trendless evening would transpire, I has a pair of trousers handed down from daddy which would have put me squarely on a golf course and a shirt probably four times my size.

My prankster colleagues then concealed my well-pressed clothes that I only got access to them with hardly any time to spare for the event.

Well, my oversized shirt and trousers had me dressed up to the nines with the help if some cord to keep the trousers up.

Bellies or backsides

Nowadays, I cannot really say what I find most irksome to the sight, the exposed bellies of unlady-like girls who have done no gym work looking a healthy 6 months pregnant from wearing cropped tops in the summer or the exposed backsides of underwear of young men wearing trousers very much like the cut of my daddy’s hand-me-downs.

That is fashion, they say, the trend of today. Young men walking down the street unable to keep their trousers up even though they have belts bigger than Mohamed Ali’s title belts.

The walk of big balls

More so, the trousers so affect that gait in that the full extent of stride cannot be realised with trousers so far down the legs everyone moves with a swagger almost like having to cope with genital goitre.

It is a sad state of affairs that the quest to belong is a madness of conformity that makes every foolish trend look like the best thing around and any smart observer of these trends who does no participate is almost always square and an outsider.

Hey! I’ll rather be outside this folly before I find myself growing up ever so disgracefully. I guess I am just old-fashioned.