Row, Row, Row your Boat? 100th posting!

Hello again dear readers. Herewith is the 100th blog posting, in which I am run over by a kayak (on dry land).

Please pardon the blogger’s hiatus: I was so busy living my life that I ran out of energy to chronicle it.
Here is a list of things I could have been writing about in the past month:

--Hearing the news that my father was admitted to the hospital for treatment of a clot in his leg (DVT) on his 85th birthday.
--Going away for an overnight in the Cotswolds and taking a hike through a pasture filled with horses, over a stile, and into another pasture filled with sheep and lambs. Having the shoe sucked off my right foot by a rogue mud patch. Having to wash my shoes and socks in the sink at the hotel.
--Taking a break in the hotel’s Jacuzzi spa, and having the same shin and ankle pain that I experienced after my last transatlantic flight, complete with swollen ankle and bulging blue veins.
--Trying to reach a private doctor through email about said problem, and getting no response (he was away). Trying to get an urgent care appointment through the NHS. (I was told to call the next day and get a same-day emergency appointment).
--Carrying on with my social plans. The St. John’s Wood Women’s Club annual Spring Luncheon was to be held in a restaurant in Camden. The plan was to take a canal boat from the Little Venice area of London (near Maida Vale in W9) along the Regent’s Canal to Camden.
--Becoming the only woman on the face of the earth to be run over by a kayak on dry land. Now I have your attention!

As I and 50 of my new best friends were walking down the towpath on the way to the canal boat, I was walking carefully as the veins in my shins were swollen and throbbing. I had the canal to my left, and I noticed a man passing me to my right, along the wall. He was carrying a lilac kayak. For some reason, he couldn’t have waited for the group of us to pass his put-in point. He had to walk up from behind us and insert himself into the middle of the group. Then, instead of waiting for us all to pass, he either lost control of (giving him the benefit of the doubt) or unwisely, decided to swing the boat around and put in perpendicular to the water’s edge. There was no warning that this was about to happen, and no time to react. I was broadsided in the front of the shins by the boat. This knocked me off balance, and I took a step forward to avoid falling backwards on my ass/hip/head. As I stepped forward, the boat came back at my shins for another bite. This time, I “decided” to fall forward INTO the boat, and wound up smashing down on my rear end into the molded plastic seat of the kayak.
At least eight women leapt towards me with cries of “are you all right”? I sat dazed in the seat of the kayak which now rested on the asphalt towpath. The Australian young man said “You walked into my boat!!” The women asked if I was hurt. “Just my ass, and my pride”, I answered. They couldn’t believe I hadn’t broken anything. The Aussie kept on trying to blame me for falling into his kayak. After about five attempts, to which I said nothing and wouldn't even LOOK at him, he finally said it was completely his fault, but he never apologized. Of course, the story of my shins was just too long to try and describe the pre-existing condition, but now they REALLY hurt. After a minute or two I got up and hobbled over to the boat and boarded it gingerly. The two glasses of wine I enjoyed at lunch at the restaurant Gilgamesh that afternoon certainly helped to soothe my wounded ego, if not my throbbing shins.

The next day I was able to see one of the GPs in the NHS practice to which I belong. She thought, given the conditions of the initial pain (an airplane flight—my legs were fine when I got on at Heathrow, and in agony when I got off in Boston for my father-in-law’s funeral) that an immediate assessment for DVT was in order. I was pretty sure that was not what was causing the swollen veins in my shins and feet, but I wasn’t going to tell her how to do her job.
I was referred to the Rapid Assessment Unit at St. Mary’s Hospital Paddington. This unit seems to exist solely to assess for DVT. There were two other patients there that afternoon, both with swollen ankles and calf pain, both in their 80’s. It turned out none of us had DVT. The nurses told me that what I was doing to treat the painful veins was correct, and to keep doing it (I have entered the land of Support Hose). I am keeping systematic track of changes in barometric pressure (airplane cabins), heat (Jacuzzi baths) and monthly hormone status, as the swelling and pain in my shins is brought on by the same conditions as most of my migraine headaches. I tried to get the private GP, who works with the dive chamber in a nearby hospital, interested in studying my shins and re-creating the symptoms with systematic manipulation of the experimental conditions, but I was not taken seriously.
So I came home with a second pair of support hose (trendy black!), some Ibuprofen with codeine, and a new appreciation for the National Health Service.

Other news includes the fact that we are looking for a bigger flat or house, and that I have been to Ireland for the first time. Details of that trip shall follow when I get the pictures uploaded. I thought I’d spare you a gory photo of my shins…