So THAT'S Why I'm Lazy....

I've got to say it came as rather a surprise.  I assumed that stuff hurting was just what happened as you got older.  Since my mid-teens I've been doing sports that have been a bit hard on the old body, and then from University onwards, more so.

The roll call of sports just seemed destined for old age carnage: whitewater kayaking.  Rafting.  Climbing.  Slamming the mountain bike into things.  Trail running.  Ultra trail running.  Oh - triathlon looks good!  Ironman.  Beyond iron man, extreme iron man.  Celtman.  Double Brutal.  Cross country mountain bike racing.  Ultra matrathons.  Judo.  Karate.  Boxing.  Cage fighting.  Swimming.  Sea swimming.

As time past I got better and better, fitter and faster.  I peaked, and then gradually slumped down until my lower back made moving fast something I thought twice about.  My first ten minutes of most days are hobbled around like I'm on stilts, my Achilles tendons tightened to crossbow torque.

That's just what happens when you get older, I thought.

Meanwhile, my life kind of fell apart.  A string of terrible choices.  And with it, depression, anxiety attacks.  Stress.  Insomnia.  Shivering and the inability to get warm.  Exhaustion.  Lack of motivation.  For the following two years, I shuffled through a sort of perma-crisis, ricocheting around firefighting and playing a high-stakes splat the rat game with a number of spinning plates of hot trauma, topped with lashings of melting consequence.

For a large part, I felt i deserved it, so I just got on with things.  Other thing, I didn't.  But, much like Duror, I reached out for my elm tree and simply endured. 

This was not a good strategy.  Eventually I started getting too ill, too often for it to be coincidence.  

Blood tests.

Hypothyroidism.  At what seems to be quite the advanced state.  Whilst it's nice to have a reason for perhaps some of the change in my attitude and behaviour over the last few years, it's put me at a fork in the road.

Literally.  I love forks, ideally with stuff on them.  I now have an excuse for my weight gain; medical permission to sit on the sofa and watch TV - a prescription of Cosy Night In (CNI TM).

Or I can use this discovery to learn about what can be done with this body, with its newly labelled limitation.  Much like my asthma, it's a bloody good opportunity to go "Hey world.  Watch this!" And to blast a Sharpe-shaped hole through this new obstacle.

I've got to be honest - I fancy a huge forkful of pasta and cheese.  Jokes aside, i hurt and I've lost my mojo in a big ole way.

Some company would be nice, and maybe a few folks will physically join me and share some of the journey with me.  And perhaps some people will have, or come to, the same diagnosis as me (hopefully with a little less collateral damage along the way) and it'll be nice to learn about your stories too.

Join me?