grapes of wrath

Grapes of Wrath.

It’s been a week since my little unconscious episode, 7 whole days. Obviously I visited the Docs and sought some professional advice, I needed to know if I was going to keel over and meet the grim reaper on my way to hell or if I would indeed see another spring. The docs was a good move, on one hand I was informed I was in very good physical shape, nice to hear that from a medical professional but the downside that didn’t explain what had happened. Blood tests had to be taken and were sent to be tested. Full credit to the NHS, the results were delivered the next day, I hear so many bad things about the NHS but yet have only good experience. Anyway, the results showed that I was anaemic, but why. In a nutshell my red blood cell count was down by 35% which is quite a lot I am led to believe. It certainly explained a lot of things over the last few months, not only the fainting, tiredness, lack of concentration, sore heads, irritability, so this was good. But why?

Nobby Stiles.

After much more examination it was concluded that blood loss from bleeding haemorrhoids was to blame, something that both shocked and I guess also made perfect sense to me. I can’t remember when I first realised I had issues with the roids but it was a long time ago (fighting on the post punk barricades perhaps, though it wasn’t called post punk then), probably late teens. For the 6 or 7 years I was veggie/vegan it wasn’t an issue and then it crept back when I reintroduced meat into my diet, the exact date of which I cannot remember. While sparing the details they seem to be aggravated by certain foodstuffs, meat and *alcohol seem to be the two biggest enemies also dehydration doesn’t favour a comfortable seat. So now I am on some heavy ferrous fumarate dosage to pump up my iron and red cell count.

Duke of Argyll’s

Since getting the diagnosis and establishing a course of action it does feel like an immense weight has been lifted from my shoulders, without sounding like a drama queen about the whole episode it was a wake up call I probably deserved, a change of lifestyle was needed. And so we will see what the next months bring. From a cycling perspective, no cross racing for me this year, though I do intend to start some gentle leg turning on the rollers this weekend. This is obviously crap but hopefully it will result in a stronger more focussed me at the end of the treatment. Plans are afoot for some big rides next year, the rest of this year is getting back to square one.

A big thanks for all the kind words received.

*Alcohol deserves a posting on its own and in time it will get one.

And to finish, here's a cool video with sublime electronic music attached.