"Does it count if you exercise one leg?"

I know that this is perhaps one of the strangest questions I have ever asked, but it is what came out of my mouth this morning. There is a reasonable explanation for asking this question, so just bare with me a little. Among my health issues I have Hypermobility syndrome, which sounds more fun than it is. It always conjures up images of people folding themselves into tiny boxes or bending into strange shapes; fun stuff that you might see in a modern day circus.

The vast majority of people who have hypermobility are unlikely to have any adverse side effects. Then there are those whose joints have a tendency to dislocate. I fall in the middle; I do have hip and shoulder subluxation on the left hand side, but it isn't something that happens all the time. This week, just to piss me off, both joints tried to make a break for freedom. They failed, but that doesn't mean I'm not in a lot of pain.

You have probably seen people with hypermobility syndrome on television or among your friends, maybe you have it. Many people can go through life without ever having a diagnosis because they never have cause to visit a physiotherapist or to say to their doctor "Hey, look how far back I can bend my fingers/knees/elbow etc". By the way, if you talk to your doctor like that I am going to worry about you a little.

The one part of my body that I definitely do not have hypermobility in is my elbows. Wrists, fingers, knees, hips, ankles, toes (yes, weird) and my lower spine all have hypermobility and bend in strange ways. I am more conscious of it now that I am hitting my 40s than I was in my 20s; back then I would have joints in strange positions without realising I had, until someone commented. Well, I say commented, it was often more like a half-yell followed by "Oh, God, why is your thumb on the back of your hand like that? That's gross" (thanks for that, thinks I). When I say on the back of my hand, I don't mean that my thumb is growing out of the back of my hand (that would be weird), what I mean is this (photo).






I did used to bend my thumb further around the back of my hand without realising I had, but like I said, I try to be more careful these days so have only moved it a little. Even so, I still get told off when I inadvertently do that. It's far less entertaining and exciting than someone standing on their own head (I wonder if they worry about foot odor when they do that?)



Anyway, while I was lying in bed in the early hours I had the great idea of at least exercising one leg by doing leg raises. Okay, yes, if I was a healthy person it may be classed as cheating to use a resistance band to assist a little, but I'm not a healthy person and I need the extra help. I could only do this using my right leg and could not hold the resistance band with my left hand because of my shoulder so, again, just used my right hand. I did sets of side and front leg lifts and did a little triceps work on my right arm, no resistance other than gravity.

I took my time and did the movement very slowly, which adds to the exercise, and also spaced things out. It may not sound an awful lot to many people and back before the pain conditions crept up on me I would have thought the same. Nowadays though, trust me when I say that even that small amount of exercise caused an increase in pain that made me feel quite sick for a while. Despite that I am pleased that I did it. I miss being able to weight train, which I always loved, but something is always better than nothing.

Is this the world's strangest motivation to exercise?

This is going to sound a little odd, so bare with me, I promise I will explain myself. As anyone who has known me for a while can testify, I am terrified of spiders. I don't mean that I shriek like a baby and squash the poor little arachnid, I mean I scream loud enough to wake the dead. Since I am fairly certain that none of us want zombies walking the earth, I would like to request that all spiders remain outside and do not enter my home.

Unfortunately at 4:00 am this morning, one particular spider decided that it did not want to stick with this restriction. My husband and I were sitting in the living room on the sofa, as lying down was - and is - causing quite a lot of pain around my rib cage. I glanced down at the floor, impersonated a boiling kettle and attempted to exit the room vertically, via the ceiling. It would appear that although me shoving the pouffe across the floor as I attempted to move my legs did cause the invader to pause momentarily, but it soon resumed the attack.

I promise that I am not exaggerating; it was the size of the palm of my hand. I am including the legs in that size estimation as, to me, they are the worst part of the spider. There is a strong possibility that the spiders do have a 'terrify her to death' contract out on me. There have been times in the past when it should not have been possible for any spider to confront me, but... Some eighteen years ago I was walking across a car park in West Bromwich with my mom after checking out a wedding dress shop - in the days before I got my wheels.The rain was torrential; I mean it was so strong that it was bouncing a good three inches off the floor when it hit. We were around a third of the way across the car park when something made me look down; a huge spider was sitting on the car park, in this terrible rain, giving me the evil eye. It is no exaggeration to say that I was both petrified and astounded to see this hairy-legged critter there.

Believe it or not, I am actually a lot better than I used to be. I once missed college because I couldn't get up the stairs to get showered or dressed, I have called friends round to dispose of them and once refused to sleep in my bedroom for several weeks because my dad had squashed a spider on the ceiling. To be fair that had left a spider-gut stain that I just couldn't cope with. I slept in one of the spare bedrooms until dad had disinfected and re-painted the ceiling. Yes, I am full-on phobic rather than a wee bit unnerved by them.

Yet there is something I am more afraid of than spiders; daddy long-legs (crane flies). Those things have lead to some far more dramatic room exits than the spiders. I once ran out of a meeting with senior managers at the DWP, back when I worked there, because a crane fly was dangly-legging its way round the room. Someone did eventually take pity and remove it, but not before everyone had laughed themselves silly.

Oddly this does have something to do with exercise and mobility. As you have probably guessed, it is a little difficult to scream like a siren and run out of the room when you can barely move. Add to that, I am certainly not sitting in my wheelchair all day, as my butt tends to go numb after a while. So, seeing that huge, monstrous beastie has given me motivation to carry on with my physio exercises in the hope that mobility will improve somewhat. 

I am continuing to be very careful about what I do and making sure that I don't go overboard with the physio. I will be honest and confess that I haven't yet started my yoga as I can't find the DVD. Yes, I know, bit of a lame excuse really as there are, no doubt, hundreds of low impact yoga videos on the internet. I do want to be careful though, hence the desire to stick with the DVD that JJ - the physio at my GP practice - recommended.

I hope that you are getting on with whatever challenges have cropped up in your life lately - and more than that - I hope that you are coping better with your fears than I am with my arachnophobia.

Photography, dodgy hair cuts, strange fashions and family

Me and my dad circa 1975, Saundersfoot.

I have just been looking through some old photographs that I scanned and saved onto the computer several years ago. I hadn't realised that I had transferred them over to my laptop too, so it was rather a nice surprise to find them sitting in a file waiting for me to open it up. Isn't it strange looking back and seeing your parents looking so young? This is a photograph of me and my dad at Saundersfoot beach, I would guess at 1975 judging by my age. For the record I have no plans to terrify the public and copy the clothing from the photograph. I promise that you are all safe.

As a social history addict, I adore looking at old photographs, particularly of family. I was lucky enough to have borrowed all my Gran's photo albums and to have scanned quite a lot of them in. Some of the photographs that I like the best are from the early 1900s up to the late 1930s, predominantly of my Gran and her family. It's wonderful to see the change in the way that we take and pose for photographs over the last hundred years. For instance, the photograph to the left is my Grandad and his mom in 1917, while the one below that is my Gran (standing on the chair), her three sisters and their nanny. I'm not sure of the date of this one, but my Gran was born 1919, so I would guess at early 1920s. My Great Grandmother passed away from uterine cancer when my Gran was still quite young, after spending time in an asylum. I am unsure of the reason that she had been committed, and sometimes wonder if it was due to post-natal depression or some similar condition.

If you compare these with the photographs below, I am sure you'll agree that there is a huge difference in the way that people pose for the camera. Part of that is going to be down to changes in technology. The cameras used to take these two photographs in 1917 and early 1920s would have had much slower shutters speeds to achieve the same quality of photograph, in comparison with today. It looks as though my gran had moved a little here, as her face is slightly blurred and she does look as though she's getting bored. I think another big thing is the change in the way we dress. Both these photos are not only much more posed, but clothes seem more formal - particularly if you look at the photographs below.

The photograph immediately to the left shows my Great Grandmother, Jessie, and her grandchildren - from left to right they are Pam, Georgina (Bunt), my dad Pete and Christopher. I love the differences in how the photographs are taken; everything is so much more casual. Shutter speeds, films, heck everything to do with photography has improved by around 1950 when this was taken. But still, if you look at this in comparison to the photo of me and my dad, clothing is still much more formal and covering much more - and, is my uncle Chris wearing a tie while paddling in the sea? I am finding that a little on the weird side.

Bunt, Pam, Gran, Dad, Chris - I think at Dudley Zoo.

I know that the earlier photos have been taken in a formal photographers studio while the one from the 1950s and mine from 1975 are outdoors and much more casual, but even so all of the photographs are, to some degree posed. The photographer has had to choose when to take the photo, from what angle, who and what to include, as well as all the decisions involved in shutter speed, aperture, focus and so on. In truth, there isn't any such thing as a completely natural photograph, because even if the subject is unaware of the camera, the photographer is making all those decisions and creating the image that they want you to see.

Personally, I'm just glad that fashion has changed and become more casual, even if it has included some dodgy mom hair-cuts when it came time for school photographs, as evidenced by the photo of me and my brother, below. Yes, that is me in a dress - not something you're likely to see repeated all that often. I would say that I was around 3 in that photograph, with my brother, Simon, still under one year old. Thank you for tolerating my fascination with photography and social history. Believe me, I love to see everybody's photographs on social media - even selfies - though I do admit that I am less keen on photographs where people are trying to imitate ducks...

Evil puppeteers jerking me around

Seeing the dawn from the wrong side once again, I am reaching the point where I just don't quite know how to get my body working well enough to sleep when I am supposed to. As a life-long insomniac I have tried just about every trick in the book, from drinking warm milk and avoiding television or the internet for an hour before bed, to listening to hypnosis tapes designed to help people sleep.

Unusually for me it isn't the pain that has been keeping me awake. It is the muscular jerking that is putting paid to nice relaxing sleep and pleasant dreams - if you can count being a kick-ass, sword wielding zombie killer in your dreams as pleasant. The muscular jerking first raised its ugly head a couple of years ago, just very occasionally at first, then increasing more and more.

It is kind of hard to describe to anyone who hasn't experienced something similar, but I am going to try. Does it make sense if I say that it feels like an electric shock suddenly shooting down from my elbow, zipping down my arm, through my hand and into my fingers? It hits my hand like a hammer, jerking my hand up and open or slamming it down onto the bed or the keyboard that I can't use. Things have started to be thrown across the room not by a poltergeist but by the evil puppeteer who is controlling my movements.

My GP did say to me that muscular jerking is rare with gabapentin, that it is more usual for it to stop as a result of the medication. I appear to have gone with my usual trick of doing the opposite - something a little childish that I normally relish!

As the medication change hasn't done the trick, I am going to try something else. I am going to try a combination of using a TENS machine on my arms to see if that helps and - not at the same time - I am going to try using light weights and just doing some bicep curls and maybe a little triceps work. I am going to be sensible and try not to get competitive with myself. I need to try something, but also go about this intelligently. If anyone sees me putting anything online anywhere that makes it looks like I am being an idiot about things, please deal me a verbal slap to get me back under control!