English man in Font

One week ago I saw a hand specialist and I went in filled with optimism. He listened to my explanation, my adamant tone regarding just how important it is I have a working hand, and then made a swift diagnosis. He said that there was some sort of rupture on my tendon sheath, which was rubbing against my A1 pulley and getting further aggravated and enflamed.

The week before seeing the specialist I decided to try and climb as much as I could, in order to give me a good understanding of where my hand was at in terms of pain/recovery/strength etc. This way I would have a good benchmark to work from. I managed to climb 4 times, and although I could feel something wasn’t quite right in my hand, I was also able to climb on most things without any pain. Going in to the meeting with the specialist I was feeling like I was getting over the injury. Although the hard nodule was still there, it wasn’t too painful and seemed to be recovering of it’s own accord. I figured I could drop back into a steady climbing schedule again, building up from medium to hard in the next month or two.

Then the doc made his diagnosis, a single steroid shot through the heart, sorry, hand. I was definitely very apprehensive about this, but he assured me that it was an excellent anti inflammatory and that the downsides were de minimis. Reassured, but still a bit worried, I decided to follow his advice. The injection itself was mildly painful, and I left the clinic feeling like I had a hand I couldn’t use. I could barely move my fingers and it was kind of painful. He had warned me that it might feel worse before it felt better, so I figured a couple of days would pass and it would soon be back to work with all trace of injury gone! A couple of days passes, my hand feeling like a separate entity from my body. I couldn’t move my fingers to their full range, I couldn’t hold anything heavy with my left hand, and I generally felt like a bit of a spaz. The palm of my hand looked swollen and I didn’t want to be prodding it too much, so I let it do it’s thing. 5 days passed and it still didn’t feel anywhere near right. The hard nodule seemed much bigger than before, and I was still unable to hold onto anything heavy or torquey. Now 8 days have passed, my hand still isn’t feeling normal, and the hard nodule remains larger than it was before the injection. I’m no doctor, so self diagnoses isn’t my forte, but I do know that my hand shouldn’t be like this right now. I’ve made another appointment but unfortunately it’s for another 6 days time. The waiting game now continues.

I hate this feeling of not knowing, of not even knowing what I should be doing to help the situation. I’m just waiting and trusting that someone else makes the right decisions for my body.

Following on from the previous post on feeling somewhat directionless, baby steps have begun to take shape. Or rather, a certain path is being explored. There are many paths to explore, but without committing to the exploration I won’t get anywhere, so here goes.

Movement. A good friend once sent me postcard which said “movement is life. Stillness is death” and it’s the kind of statement that can mean nothing but can also mean everything if you choose to read something into it. It’s true on a very logical level, in that being dead is intrinsically linked with being still. Nothing moves when you’re dead. I guess it’s also logically the case than you can’t be totally still when you’re alive, because you’re heart would be beating, no matter what sort of deep meditative trance you entered. However, I don’t think the quote is intended to be taken solely on this logical level, because on that level it’s clearly true. I didn’t read too much into the quote when I got it, beyond thinking it was a nice thing to point out. I still haven’t read too much into it, but my mind does sometimes slip back to thinking about it, and normally it’s linked to thoughts about where I may be going in life.

There are only 3 directions you can move in life (if you accept the definition that stillness is death) and they are forwards, backwards, and sideways (also assuming we are on a 2D plane and can only move in right angles!). For better or for worse I’ve always linked forwards with good, backwards with bad, and sideways with sometimes acceptable but not really good enough. I’ve also linked forwards with progress, perhaps obviously. I don’t ever want to be still. I only want to move forward, and will accept that sometimes sideways movement will occur, but I would like to minimise it. Backwards movement is something I’ve always strived to avoid, in the sense that I think of it as regression. Sometimes turning around isn’t moving backwards, it’s really moving forwards, and that’s something which I’ve always tried to remember. Never be too proud or too stubborn to turn around, not when it’s the right thing to do.

Climbing is such a simplistic thing to do. You put energy in, you get better. You can set a goal, you work for the goal, you achieve the goal. You move on. It’s an intensely simple process, but it provides a wonderful framework for having direction. It’s easy to maintain your forward direction when you can see what you’re aiming for. Life isn’t so simple, and sometimes it’s hard to see the difference between forwards and sideways. Sometimes they only reveal themselves with hindsight. Right now, I feel like I’m most definitely moving sideways. My actual climbing is probably moving backwards, mainly due to the lack of it, but that’s a physical limitation and so I can’t do anything about it and it doesn’t worry me in a simple sense. But once I lose my ability to go climbing I lose a major focus and direction in my life. I’ve never wanted climbing to be my whole life, for I think it’s unhealthy to only have 1 dimension. But without the carrot in front of my eyes it’s much easier to look around. Without my goals and direction being largely climbing based, I feel a little bit freer to take a look around me and see what’s on offer. It’s usually at these (massively rare) points in my life that I suddenly start to think that maybe climbing isn’t what I want to be doing. Perhaps I want to go back to Uni and learn some more, or perhaps I want to plough my energy into some career path. I end up facing all these huge life changing questions but never coming up with an answer. Maybe I’m not asking the right questions. I want to know what it is that I really want to do, and I usually answer myself by saying there are lots of things that I really want to do. But how do I choose one of them? Sometimes I simply recover from my injury and I return to climbing, return to my natural (or should that be nurtured?) home amongst the rocks of the world. Then I suddenly feel at peace again, as if I should be nowhere else in the world other than trying that particular route/boulder problem. But could it simply be the case that I’m most at peace solely because of re-finding my comfort zone? I guess it’s possible, and to be perfectly honest I don’t know the true answer. I can only say that I’m searching for it. I’m left with a feeling of uncertainty about whether to ask myself such questions, questions which I struggle to understand whether or not can even be answered. I always thought that asking questions was the right thing to do, but could I perhaps have been wrong? The comedy of my previous sentence doesn’t evade me, not at all.

As for right now, in this moment, I don’t have my climbing. I’m being held away from it, and I have been for quite some time. I’ve almost forgotten what it feels like to be stood amongst the boulders of Ticino, gazing out at snowy mountain peaks, feeling a cold breeze against my face, and breathing in so deep and so hard that I want never to exhale. Almost forgotten. I can never truly forget because it’s so much a part of me that it will always exist deep down. For now, I’m left looking for a path into the future, and right now I have no idea where that path will lead.  There can be no doubt that I’m moving sideways, which is something I guess, but it doesn’t sit comfortably with me. I don’t like moving sideways. I want progress. That’s just who I am. The last couple of months have sat a little uncomfortably with me, as I’m not moving towards something that I desire. Now I’m finally realising this and trying to figure out what the next step is. Hopefully clarity will drop by soon.

It seems to me that sometimes realising where you want to go is harder than getting there.

Sometimes the truth really is stranger than fiction, and sometimes it’s just so terribly mundane that it makes for such bland writing, to the point whereby the words seem wasted. It wouldn’t take a genius to figure out which has actually occurred in the last couple of months.

Whilst autumn was spent editing and cursing a seemingly never ending series of rendering issues, winter would be different. I would finish the film, pack my car, and head to the rocks. I would regain my form, climbing myself into great shape, and then go to Font to settle my account. Unfortunately the truth was a much more sombre affair.

Sometime around the end of November I ended up in England and whilst climbing one weekend at the climbing wall I noticed a strange pain in my hand. Nothing particularly noticeable, and it became far less noticeable when my back suddenly seized. The pain of not being to raise my left arm above my head, or being able to bend down to take off my shoes made me forget all about my strange little hand pain. When I did return to climbing after my back had loosened off, I found my hand hurting much more. What was a tiny little lump at the base of my ring finger, in the palm of my hand, was providing me with a rather incredible amount of pain. After trying to climb at Tivoli once or twice during December I realised something was seriously wrong. The lump was small but very hard, and seemed to be getting more painful. After one session my hand was so painful that for the next several days it hurt to even open it. Massaging the affected area seemed to only make it worse. Climbing was out of the question. More days and weeks were passing, and all my dreams of getting into shape were slipping away.

In January I decided to head back to England to try and see a doctor so I could get some professional advice. Unfortunately the GP said nothing more than “you need to see a hand specialist”, then referred me on. I spoke to another doctor (also a climber) who told me that she had exactly the same thing, and a bit of rest, plus lots of Ibuprofen helped her get over it. So I tried that, and 2 weeks later it’s still painful, but less so than it originally was. I tried climbing again last night, and could really feel that my hand wasn’t right. I expected to wake up with it in pain this morning, but the good news is that it’s not ultra painful, only mildly aggrieved. What was annoying was just how much of a punt I was at the wall. My fingers were weak, my body lame, and my movement terrible. It’s not too annoying, because I know that once my hand is working properly I can be back in form after a month or two of hard work. That isn’t in any doubt, but the seriousness of my hand injury is in some doubt. My appointment with the specialist is next week, so hopefully I’ll get some answers that can aid in my recovery, and not simply advice to the tune of “Don’t go climbing for a while”.

I’ve been very lucky when it’s comes to injuries in the past, as I’ve very rarely suffered from anything serious. In terms of enforced rest, the longest I’ve had to take was probably no more than 6 weeks, which always led me to believe that my body was pretty good at adapting to training. That’s why I’m so surprised at this strange hand injury. I can’t remember ever hurting it specifically, only that a dull ache from that point in my hand turned into a small hard lump which was extremely painful in the space of just 6 weeks. I know that isn’t right.

So that’s the boring truth. I have no big house. No warehouse. No world class training venue. Only a hand injury which is causing me some frustration. Turns out that the truth is only mundane in this case, sorry to disappoint you. P.M.A. Always.