Oh, the pain
A physio more loquacious than a parrot who has OD'ed on amphetamines, caffeine and Mars bars
Maybe he’s drunk too much Red Bull.
Or maybe his brain is misfiring.
Or perhaps it is a clever pain management technique. Rabbit on like a radio talk show host who hasn’t got any callers and your client may forget about the gyp their injury is giving them.
Whatever it is, the physiotherapist cannot stop talking and I am worried that he has not drawn breath and so may collapse.
‘I got something similar too,’ he says, scribbling something on a form.
‘Yeah, I was playing rugby and injured my knee when I was seventeen and it all swelled up. And then a year later it came back after I had a viral infection. Yes, we went out drinking with the team and I got home and then woke up the next day with the knee having flared up and I’d been feeling a bit poorly. Mind you, I’d had 23 pints of bitter, but I’m sure that had nothing to do with it. Oh no, hang on … that’s right, it’s the other way around. I didn’t get the injury from playing rugby. It was from falling over when we we were out drinking. And then a year later it came back all of a sudden, sort of out of the blue. It was most bizarre.
‘What happens you see, is that your body has all these inflammation points when you have a virus so you are more susceptible to injury or having a previous injury flare up again. Anyway, let me tell you about these parts I’ve ordered for my VW camper van that are the wrong ones…’
I am not particularly interested in the physio’s previous injuries or his VW camper van. I simply (and desperately) want him to help with my shoulder and upper back, both of which have been giving me so much gyp that I have slept for a grand total of 34 minutes in the last 72 hours.
I have seen this physio before due to another injury to my lower back. That injury, precipitated by a long-haul flight during Advent — and then exacerbated by some ambitious stretching during the Christmas season — gave me plenty of gyp. Plenty enough to last a whole calendar year. But the Good Lord decided that I need to experience a bit more gyp during Lent so here we are — back listening to the world’s most garrulous physio.
‘We’ve got a holiday home in Whitby you see. And I sleep with one pillow there. But at home I sleep with two pillows. And for some reason the last time we went there I slept with two pillows and that set off something in my neck and it got all tight so I needed a friend to administer some treatment…’
On and on he drones (a bit like this Substack blog eh? — Ed). He returns to the subject of how difficult it is to send back the VW camper van parts that don’t fit his blasted VW camper van. Then he somehow moves on to bang on about how it is worth ordering more than £50 worth of clothes from online retailers as then you don’t have to pay postage and sometimes the return postage is free. He goes into incredible detail about how he ordered a large jumper that was too large and that he should have instead ordered a medium and a large and tried them both on. Then he wouldn’t have had to pay to return the jumper to the retailer or something like that. But it all doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of things as his wife didn’t like the jumper anyway.
My shoulder at this point starts to give me even more incredible gyp.
Somehow he segues back into talking about his holiday home and his birthday plans for the weekend and how they are going to his holiday home and his wife is cooking chilli for it and how once they went to the holiday home and had chilli and then the next day in some cafe or restaurant he had chilli again. Why this is I cannot remember. Perhaps there was nothing else on the menu. My gyp has clouded my memory and I cannot remember how this double-chilli day managed to take place.
He sticks some needles into my upper back and neck and goes on about acupuncture being the greatest thing since Tiger Balm and Deep Heat.
I ask him if the acupuncture will make the injury more painful for an initial few hours. He says it should not. I don’t bother telling him that my lower back gave me excruciating gyp after his stuck his infernal needles into it the last time. Well, that’s not strictly true. I have no window of silence within which to relay this information to the physio, as he has started to bang on about something else. But I have tuned out and can only think about the agonising gyp that I am experiencing.
I pay the receptionist and flee. I have to come back next week. I am dreading it already.
Walking home while stumbling down the street and holding my arm as still as I can — as if I am doing an impression of Joe Biden — I see a VW camper van parked on the road and start having Rambo-style flashbacks.
I almost dive into a bush on the side of the pavement to hide from the physio in case he emerges from said van. Then I realise that he cannot possibly be in the VW camper van as I left him in his treatment room only 15 minutes ago. And plus his blasted VW camper van is out of commission at present.
But it is too late.
I have aggravated my shoulder even more from twisting to face the bush.
And it is giving me incredible gyp.
Progress report
The Fragment from the Shroud , my new novel, is OUT NOW. In ebook and paperback format.
The Anchorite, my new novella, is being edited.
Take it easy. And thanks for reading.
Very amusing Marek although back and shoulder pain is not funny. Your physio! What a chatterbox! He needs to chill out. I think you would both benefit from a yoga retreat. 🧘♂️