Week 7 - Up, Down, Up, Down...

After a pretty good week in Week 6 this week has been a bit of a mixture. Wednesday, Thursday and Friday were particularly bad days with a return to pain levels of a couple of weeks ago. The heat packs came back into use and my mood plummeted. I took things pretty quietly and just tried not to aggravate anything and it seems to be settling down.

I started the week pretty well with a long walk on Monday and a walk and a session in the hydrotherapy pool - my first - on Tuesday. The hydrotherapy pool was great, the water was warm and the gentle exercise with lots of my weight supported was great. Interestingly I clearly used muscles I hadn't used for some time as I could feel them the next day!

I'm not sure what caused things to go down hill later in the week but I found it particularly frustrating as I'd been going so well! Because of the progress in week 6 I'd also chosen Friday of week 7 as the day to start reducing my reliance on heavy duty painkillers. After a conference with my doctor we settled on a gradual reduction approach and the use of paracetamol as needed to take up any slack. Being stubborn I chose to continue with the plan and cut my daily intake by 25%. I've had to use paracetamol a couple of times to take up the slack but not in any continuous way. I also haven't yet suffered any untoward withdrawal effects from reducing the heavy duty painkillers. So that's all positive. Tomorrow I'm due to reduce intake by a further 33% so let's hope that goes as well!

Distance walked this week was 25.2 km which is a slight reduction on the previous week and reflects my "take it easy" approach over the latter part of the week.