Waiting rooms, worries and woods

23 May 2017

The days after our Canadian adventure seemed to be mainly taken up with waiting rooms and worries. There was a visit to the walk in centre for me to get my hand x-rayed, just to be on the safe side. It still didn’t work properly but it wasn’t broken. It would heal on its own. Commando went back to work but struggled with pain that came and went in a random way in the muscles, tendons and joints of his arms, legs and neck. Every morning was a guessing game. What would hurt, what would work. He had blood tests and anti-inflammatories. The pills didn’t seem to help but moving did. He still couldn’t run.

Yesterday the searing, againising pain in his thigh came back. This time it was the  left leg, not the right and there was no trip or stumble to cause it. Nothing at all. Our doctor thought it was an auto-immune reaction of some kind. His body attacking itself by mistake. He was signed off work for a month and referred to a specialist rheumatologist. With all this going on there was a lot of worrying and not much walking.

As if I hadn’t already sat in enough medical waiting rooms, today I had a dentist appointment. On the way back I took a detour through West End Copse. The trails were soothing. Everything seemed so much greener and damper than Canada. For a short while I stopped worrying and just enjoyed one foot in front of the other through the tunnels of leaves.

There wasn’t a great deal of thought to it. I knew all the trails would lead me out somewhere so I just kept moving forwards. Down into dips, across flat board bridges, some with water, some dry, up wooden steps, letting the green of the leaves, the sounds of the birds and the smell of the damp earth soothe me.

The walk was short. When I passed the giant table and chair I knew I was in the centre of the wood. It is not a big wood Whichever way I went I’d soon come to the edge. My steps were slow, measured. There were stops to admire the bark of a tree, listen to a woodpecker, look at orange globules of fungus. For once I didn’t much care what kind it was. It was enough to see it.

When I saw the prickles of holly leaves I knew I was almost at the gate. Soon enough I could see it. Beside it the buds of the blackberries were dripping with cuckoo spit and there were wild geraniums. Then it was back to the real world of waiting rooms and worries.

Please see my copyright information before you copy or use any of the above words or pictures.