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90% of heart bypass patients……

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…… revert back to their old ways within 2 years.

That was the interesting, if alarming, statistic I learned recently.  It’s been an interesting time all round since I last wrote.  Until this morning, my health had been pretty stable, I’ve been feeling pretty good, my knees, feet and elbows were all excellent and I was walking with confidence!  A result of my medication?  Maybe, but the drug will have left my system by now as it has quite a short half life, so I was feeling pretty cool.

The band had a gig – another wedding.  Here’s me waiting to rock the party.

It was a strange set up.  Usually, we try to be in when the room is being prepared, get the gear ready, check the sound so we don’t have to interrupt the proceedings by turning up with a van full of boxes!

This time, it was quite a small room and the wedding party were using the whole space.  We had a 45 minute window to get in and ready to rock while the room was being prepared for the evening celebrations.

So, we set up as much as we could under a gazebo in the car park.  It was dark, cold, damp and not very pleasant.  By the time we got inside, my hands were like ice and we were all a bit grumpy.  Especially my bass player – a wee hug, though, and he was OK.

Anyway, all that aside, we were up and running almost within the time, it was another fab gig and loads of fun, as usual.  My hands were still a bit dodgy but everything was working pretty well.  We kept the dance floor filled and our clients were very happy.

Then, at the end of last week, I was at a seminar/forum/event thingy with the ‘process folk’ from across my company.  I work in Business Change and my employers are very keen to build a community of connected change professionals in the organisation.

OK, now, before you start yawning, I’d just like to say that I think it’s a good thing and it works.  My colleagues work all across the company and you can go for months without seeing people in your team.  So, every three months, we get to see each other ‘en masse’ at a forum.  I like these things, I’ve presented some of my work at one, it’s good.  So there!

This time, we had a couple of guest speakers and the guy who had my attention (totally) was Craig Smith from Flint Consulting.  Now, this wasn’t just because he had a really funky presentation (I do want some of that, though, I do!) but because he was a very engaging speaker too.

He started his talk with the above statistic and related it to how a lot of change programmes in companies fail.  Due to the fact that people go back to their old ways, the stuff that’s comfortable, easy, the path of least resistence, etc, etc.  I have experienced this kind of thing in my workplace first hand and I couldn’t help relating it to what I’m trying to do right now.

My wife said that I’m trying to undo 46 years of habit.  She’s right and I suppose that’s what it must also be like for heart patients.  Now, you would think that, faced with death, people with a dodgy heart would take note and put being alive before anything else.  It just goes to show how complacent we can be and how comfortable old habits are, even if the risks are great.

If I was complacent, my path of least resistence would be to start injecting my meds again, start eating rubbish again, start not getting better again and be quite happy to pass this off with a, “Well, it would never have worked anyway” or a, “All these bad things’ll never happen to me” kind of throw away remark.  So, Craig’s talk struck a chord with me on a personal level.

To succeed, I have to be stubborn, stoic, relentless, learn from my failures, drop my complacency and never give up – just how you would lead an organisation into making a change for the better.

For example, this morning (Wednesday 21st November) I woke up with a very painful swelling!  Oooh er, missus!  Not what you might be thinking, my right wrist had swollen up overnight.  This does happen, although, it hasn’t for ages.  To be honest, my wrist had been grumbling for a couple of days, but this morning was dreadful.  I couldn’t move my wrist or my hand.

Here it is as of midnight, 21/11/12.  Compared to my left side, you can see that the right wrist is still swollen (although eased off enough to allow me to type) a bit red and it has an arthritic ‘heat’ about it.  Anyone who suffers with rheumatoid will tell you that when it’s active, joints can feel like they’re burning.  I can move my fingers now, although they’re pretty crunchy!

Anyway, back to earlier today.  I had to delay going into work because I couldn’t do anything.  Shaving was almost impossible, brushing my teeth was almost impossible, putting my cufflinks in was almost impossible, shoe laces – bloody hell, they were a nightmare and putting on a tie, that was COMPLETELY IMPOSSIBLE!  Today was the first day I’d gone to work without a tie.

Now, I could’ve jumped the gun, thought that the diet isn’t working well enough and reached for the syringe.  I nearly did.  BUT, that would be allowing complacency to rule my head and I would be merrily careering down the road to failure.

I think I’m better than that – I think we all are.  I’m not completely cured, but I have come a long way so why start doubting now?  I could easily go backwards, put back the weight that I’ve lost and resign myself to injecting medication every week and maybe not feel so good while posing a risk to me and costing the NHS a small fortune.  I don’t think I should settle for that and I don’t think anyone else should either.

That’s why I am happy to tell anyone with anything autoimmune to try changing their diet before doing anything else – and be stubborn with yourself because you owe it to yourself!

So, on that note, I am taking my diet a step further by following an Autoimmume Protocol for the next 30 days.  Really, it’s just the diet I follow just now but cutting out tomatos, eggs (both of which have become staples in my diet) bell peppers and spices.  All of these things have been shown to affect people with autoimmune problems.  It should be interesting.

I’ll leave you with a quote from Thomas Edison, which I found quite interesting.  He said, “The doctor of the future will give no medicine, but will interest his patients in the care of the human frame, in a proper diet, and in the cause and prevention of disease.”

Hmmm, haven’t had that experience yet!

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This Week, I Have Been Mostly Wearing……..

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……..a grumpy face.

I have been particularly grumpy, actually.  Annoyingly, people have noticed and it’s not good when people start pointing this stuff out to you.  Now, I could put this down to my age.  I’m 46, rushing headlong into the long dark tea-time of middle age, but happy-go-lucky with it and not usually a grumpy old bastard!

Well, I have been this week.  My wife, my kids, my workmates have all had to put up with “Scott, the Grump Who Stole The Mood.”

It’s not been a great week.  After feeling quite pleased with myself in my last update, things just didn’t get back to normal.  I was waiting for my hands to recover and they didn’t.  In fact, everything just went a bit mental, sprinted quickly downhill and I really felt like a creaky old arthritic.

It’s very difficult to put into words what being a creaky old arthritic feels like.  The only way I can describe it is like being a really old car, that someone does their best to take care of but it still doesn’t perform quite in the way you expect, it limps along and you never quite know when it’ll break down – and when it does, it always gets going again but it’s just a bit ropy.  Like a bad Top Gear challenge.

Anyway, my creaky old arthriticness left me with shock, upset, disbelief, upset, anger, upset, tears, introspection, upset, swearing – oh, the swearing!  Now, I know what you’re saying.  This is all being a bit melodramatic and one should really get a grip of oneself.

Maybe you’re right.  I was, however, reminded of the dreadful flare up I had a few years ago that started with sore feet (which I ignored).  I put the feet down to lack of sleep, a bit of stress and worry associated with having two little 34 week premature babies in hospital, trying to see as much of them as I could and still do my job (saving my paternity leave for them coming home, see).

Last week, I had sore feet.  Also, my fingers weren’t settling, my right wrist was immobile, washing my hair in the shower was suddenly the most difficult and painful thing to do (not to mention towelling – I would have killed for a man-sized tumble dryer) and my knees were behaving like the unruly 7-year-old girls my tiny babies have turned into.  And my knees – jeez my knees!

Knees.  They’re funny things.  The most awkward of human joints.  Not so much a joint as a very ill-conceived mashing of unmatched bone ends and Forth Road Bridge suspension.  Doomed to failure!

When my arthritis has been bad, I’ve been able to feel the ends of my bones, especially the tops of my tibiae – it’s a particular pain that’s somewhere between an itch and being stuck with a needle.  I suddenly had that pain again and it began to worry me a bit.

Time to take action and I reached for the medication.  I had to.  I honestly felt like I had failed and last Sunday was a rotten day – in my head anyway!  By the end of the day, the drug was kicking in and I was beginning to feel much better.  I’m lucky, Adilamumab works so well that I can go for ages without it and it’ll re-establish within hours.

This doesn’t, however, make me feel better emotionally.  I haven’t been as clean as I could or should have been.  I have given in to temptation in the last few weeks and paid for it.  Maybe, I’ve reached the limit of what I’m able to do without the drugs?

My wife, who is my greatest source of encouragement and support, put it very well.  She’s pretty clever, my missus.  “You’re trying to undo 46 years of habit, Scott,” she said.  “Look at what you’ve achieved?  In the last 14 months you’ve gone from being on weekly injections and not feeling great to maybe taking them once every 6 or 7 weeks and feeling brilliant!”

She’s right and I think I’m probably being hard on myself.  She’s right about the habit thing too.  You know, I LIKE bread, I LOVE naan bread with a curry, I ADORE cakes, I’d KILL for a stodgy pudding with whipped cream and chocolate sprinkles.  Custard, ice cream, crisps, sweets, loads of beer and Pickled Onion Monster Munch!

I am finding this quite a challenge and it’s a battle with myself and myself only.  Eating Paleo is easy, having the will to put all the other crap aside is the difficult bit.  I’ve always been impetuous, quick out of the blocks to try anything, do daft stuff and I’ve never thought of myself as having much in the way of willpower.  I like that side of my character, though, it’s who I am.  In the last few days, I have been questioning whether I am capable of sticking to what I am trying to do.

Maybe it is melodrama and I should just get a grip, because I know what it’s feels like to feel great and this is important.  This is about being well, feeling great, making the rest of my life good instead of descending into ever more ill health.  I feel great when I eat clean and I have to hang on to that.

Best get on with it then!

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