Things I Learned From Falling: The must-read true story of 2020 by Nelson Claire

Author:Nelson, Claire [Nelson, Claire]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Octopus
Published: 2020-03-04T16:00:00+00:00

LONDON

I woke up exhausted. Again. Everything hurting. Again. Situation normal: all fucked up. I rolled on to my back, shoved off my duvet and felt the twinge of familiar pain from both wrists, stiff in their grey plastic casts and strapped up with Velcro. This had been going on for almost two years now. I was still waiting to get used to it, so I could get on with things. But it had only got worse. It had become my most reliable and constant companion.

The pain that had plagued my wrists had expanded its territory: today I was going to a physio session for my back. I’d already had hand therapy at the hospital on Monday morning. In fact, I’d been seeing the hand therapist so frequently that my appointments had started feeling like a catch-up with a friend. I’d bring her copies of the magazine and we’d share restaurant recommendations, recipes and stories from our weekends. We could have been two pals chatting at a bar. Instead, the only bar between us was the stainless steel one she dragged hard across my tendons in a bid to unknot them. There were warm gel baths, physical exercises, and – always – new strips of tape applied, running from my thumbs to the elbow crease of my forearms.

Physio for my back was the latest addition to my weekly routine. It wasn’t something I looked forward to – I didn’t get any relief from it – and today, particularly, I felt a complete and absolute reluctance to go. I had come to hate the physio, all of it, and as far as I could tell the pain wasn’t going away. Nevertheless… it had to be done.

No doubt it was the pain and the shitty sleep that were making me cranky.

I felt perpetually cranky.

I went through the motions of showering and dressing and dragged myself to the hospital, taking the usual lift to the second floor and sitting in my usual seat in the waiting area between the table of dated National Geographic magazines and the fake plastic tree, by this point seething and emotional. I felt I might cry at any moment…one prod could burst me like a balloon. Every part of my body tensed up, holding it in. Just get on with it. I would just get through the appointment and then get on with my day.

Ten minutes later, I was on all fours on the physio examination table in just my jeans and bra, where Priya, the effusive physiotherapist, was trying to bend me, contorting me into different shapes in an attempt to manipulate my spine.

‘Cat!’ she sang, as I arched my back. ‘Now, cow!’ as I inverted my back the other way. ‘Cat! A little more, lift your spine a little more…’

‘I can’t,’ I muttered, grimacing as the pain in my back twinged and my wrists threatened to crumple. ‘It doesn’t go that way.’

I’m not a bloody cat.

It wasn’t Priya’s fault. She wasn’t to know there was probably more to all of this than a tight posture from too much desk work.

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