I'm back, and this is why I've been away

When I started this blog, along with the website I said I wanted to know if I could manage the discipline of producing at least a sermon each week. Well given that I've not posted anything for the last month I think we know the answer to that one.

I do have my excuses ready, however. I'm suffering from a muscular skeletal disorder which throws my spine out of alignment and at times causes instability around my shoulder and arm which is severely aggravated by typing or using a mouse. I've had surgery on both feet to correct a structural problem (my feet were so flat footed that my ankles were collapsing and making my whole body out of kilter) but for some reason this wasn't sorting out the problem. I took my muscle strengthening and stretching exercises very seriously, in fact I was spending four or five hours a day on them, but to no avail.

I went to my orthopaedic surgeon ready to say that the surgery obviously hadn't worked and would he please chop the foot off if it would mean that the rest of the body would become stable and I could get on with my life. He surprised me by saying that in terms of bones everything was fine and he was referring me to a neurologist. The neurologist told me that he didn't believe I had any nasty or sinister condition but he would send me for an MRI scan just in case. While thoroughly relieved to be told that I probably didn't have a degenerative disease I was once again distressed by the fact that basically no one knew what the hell was wrong with me.

Then I saw a very good physiotherapist, to review some exercises that she had given me previously. She discovered, and has I think demonstrated, that this is actually all to do with my nerves. Years and years of my body being twisted out of shape has, in her words, stretched my central nervous system. Nerves are getting somewhat obstructed around the spine and are causing muscle tightness and general physical instability around the body. She did some manipulation to start to release them and the results were dramatic, all tightness and imbalance disappeared. It's going to take some time with this treatment and with new exercises specifically targetted at releasing the nerves and I'm suffering with trapped nerves on and off quite a lot. But I'm on my way now, the exercises that I do are properly targetting the problem and I'm not doing unnecessary muscular work.

It had got to the stage where the slightest amount of time on the computer would throw my whole body out and cause horrible irritation in the spine, the shoulder and the buttock. And that's why I stopped writing on this blog and on the website for this period of time. I'm hoping to train for the ministry and I had essays to complete for my distance learning theology course and ministry application forms to complete and it was an almighty struggle to get those done leaving nothing over for anything else.

It's been a tough time but I feel pretty optimistic now. I'm back and hopefully won't have to go missing like this again! Hopefully I'll be posting much more regularly now.