Hurting and healing - a certain symmetry

After being cooped up at home for three days with a shoulder sprain, at last I felt well enough to go for a walk this evening... Wait a minute - I've written this before... Here.

Back in July 2008, I suffered a partially-severed rotator cuff in my left shoulder. I achieved this by carrying too much weight in my rucksack while cycling, and having the shoulder straps fastened too tight. Then, rather than taking it easy at the first manifestations of pain, I kept on, making two more return journeys to work by bike and ignoring the symptoms until the pain became unsurmountable.

This time, I've done it again, but in the right shoulder. Exactly the same injury, caused exactly the same way. On Friday, I piled in my rucksack a U-bolt lock, a padlock and chain plus waterproof clothing (one of the immutable laws of bicycle security is that the lighter the bike, the heavier the locks needed to prevent its theft). On Saturday morning, I felt as though I'd merely had a bad night's sleep and did not attribute the slight shoulder ache to an overloaded rucksack. So that afternoon, Eddie and I rode down to the airport to see how the roadworks are coming on. Into that same rucksack went the 80-400mm Nikkor, the D80 around my neck with 18-200mm lens. We cycled down ul. Hołubcowa - muddy, bumpy dirt-track. By Sunday morning, the pain was worse. So then I went for the weekly shop, throwing six-packs of 1.5l bottled mineral water around. By Sunday night, the pain was so bad I knew I'd not be in any state to go to work in the morning...

Should I go and see the doctor?

NO.

There's nothing he could tell me that I didn't already know. Give me some useless cream and a one-a-day painkiller like last time? Then direct me for another appointment to get an ultrasound scan? Two (painful) journeys by car, waiting rooms, examinations, queues at the pharmacy?

Time that could be better spent in bed.

That one-a-day painkiller I got in 2008 was fine for the first 20 hours, then, before I could take the next, the pain would get excruciating. This time, I took a maximum dose of paracetamol and lay down until the pain stopped. There were four long periods when my shoulder hurt even when I was not moving; Sunday night, Monday morning, Monday night, Tuesday morning. By Tuesday afternoon it hurt only when I moved; by Tuesday night I stopped taking painkillers, by this afternoon, I'd have to move it vigorously to feel any pain at all.

I'm letting nature take its course. Last time, the doctor prescribed me another visit "in a week's time" - by when it was all over and fine thank you and not hurting at all. He also prescribed a course of six cryotherapy sessions - I didn't waste my time with this. (Looks like a batch of hokum to me.)

So nature did what it does best; that miraculous feeling of healing, of the body naturally overcoming injury is one to be relished. My left shoulder healed completely - I've not had any twinges or recurrances of the pain in the two years since that injury. The current one, now on the way to recovery, is healing quicker (now I know what to do - simply rest and manage the pain, not tear around from doctor to doctor). And the current injury is, in its own way, a blessing. It balances out the other one. Both shoulders have had exactly the same thing happen to them, and the right one is healing in exactly the same way. What doesn't kill you makes you stronger, as Nietzsche said.

I must look at how to avoid this happening again. New rucksuck, broader shoulder straps. Find some way of carrying heavier items directly on the bike (neither my Cannondale, nor my Pete White, nor my Holdsworth have brazed-on lugs for attaching a carrier rack). A large under-saddle bag would be useful; a frame-bag to carry tools, spare inner-tube etc. And leave only light items, such as clothing, to the rucksack. Ideally, however, I should ride without anything on my back.

And what was I doing while not being able to type at 120 wpm? Watching Jonathan Meades on YouTube. Britain's greatest architectural critic and television intellectual of the late 20th and early 21st Century.

In particular: Soviet architecture - Stalin's legacy and British architecture - Victoria's legacy. Each worth 90 minutes of your time to savour.

Thanks to the website of Owen Hatherley for the link to the Meades Shrine on YouTube. This is how ideas spread and take root.

Does Poland have a Jonathan Meades? Probably. Except we shall never know, for there's no Polish BBC on which he or she may shine. Just the drear, tendentious drivel of party-run TVP.

And a propos of British society, this article by Ben Macintyre about the difference between Cameron and Clegg is a gem.