Tuesday 25 August 2015

Getting down to business

In last week's post, I mentioned that I'd started a daily run around Tamworth Castle Grounds in preparation for my sponsored 5km run next month in aid of stroke-survivor charity Different Strokes.

As is often the way with such things, of course, no sooner were the words out in the blogosphere than there was a glitch. While out running on Friday afternoon, in good weather and ideal ground conditions, I started to feel my left hamstring tighten. It began to get very much worse very quickly, so I stopped running, started to try to stretch it to ease the pain and gave up running for the weekend. With my now-weekly trip to Emily Smedley (breathebalancebeactivated.com) due on Monday, it seemed sensible to let her deal with it.

As soon as I reported it to Emily on Monday morning, she diagnosed the problem. I've been running barefoot during our sessions but wearing big, thick, training shoes to run around the Castle Grounds. The foot reacts differently when wearing such shoes so I really need to keep running barefoot, or in shoes with a very thin sole, she said.

Given that training shoes were the only thing I was planning to wear during my naked run, she has recommended such 'minimalist' shoes for the event itself. These can be expensive, but they will surely prove to be worth it.

And Monday morning's session was typically intense, but typically worthwhile. She resolved my hamstring problem with her usual agonising pushes, pulls and prods as I lay on her treatment couch ("Go on, you can scream and frighten the new kids'' she said as Derby College's induction day went on outside the physiotherapy room) before I began running up and down stairs, then moved out on to one of the football pitches. I surprised myself by managing a couple of laps before she upped the ante and had me testing my hamstring by dodging in and out of a series of cones.

Tired but quietly elated at having achieved that, I thought we were done. But no; we now began doing squats, which have previously proved tricky because my stroke-affected left side wouldn't come down far enough to reach the floor. As you can see from the accompanying photograph, this milestone has now been achieved. As I've kept saying throughout this process, there is no such word as 'can't' in stroke rehab. When the photo on the left was taken, back in June, what I achieved on Monday seemed a long way away. But now I've done it. I'm not saying that running 5km just 21 months after nearly being killed by a stroke will be easy - it won't. But thanks to the support of Emily and all the other people who have helped me on this journey (you know who you are), I feel it's within reach.

If you would like to give a donation, my fundraising page is at http://uk.virginmoneygiving.com/MartinWarrillow

Wednesday 19 August 2015

Up for a challenge? Oh, go on then......

I often talk in this blog about stroke-rehab being full of small steps. Well, this week I feel as if I've taken two huge leaps into the unknown.

Firstly, I've really stepped up training for my charity 5km run next month (details of the event and how to donate are at uk.virginmoneygiving.com/MartinWarrillow). Up until the weekend, I was mainly intending to wing it and think that a combination of running, walking and staggering would get me to the finishing line. But now I've paid my registration fee to the organisers, my attitude has changed.

An intense 90 minutes with therapist Emily Smedley on Monday morning, during which I did more serious running than ever before, and ran faster than ever before, has helped to change my attitude. Now I've started running daily around the Tamworth Castle Grounds, just over the road from Warrillow Towers and am really enjoying it. All that agony on Emily's treatment couch over the last few months seems to be paying off and I'm now looking forward to my daily run, something which I don't think I've ever said in my entire 51 years.

I'm doing all the relevant exercises and thinking that by the end of September, I should be well up to running the distance if I do it properly. After all, 5km isn't that far, is it?

My second huge leap has been into another piece of 21st-century technology which I had previously avoided. Have you heard of Periscope? It's a Twitter app for iPhones that 'lets you broadcast live video to the world."

I found out about it a few weeks ago through a tech-savvy friend and have been following a small number of people since then, while trying to work out how to use it to broadcast myself. On Sunday evening, I got involved in a Facebook discussion during which various people were challenged by a mutual friend to 'take the plunge' and do our first broadcast. Ever up for a challenge, I said I'd do it and yesterdayTuesday, posted an 18-minute video about my stroke experience. It's not perfect, I suppose it was never going to be, but I've had some positive feedback and I will be posting one a week at least from now on.

The major first-time glitch was that I didn't know how to title the video (I do now - thanks, Chris Marr) but if you get into Periscope and search for me as @warrior martin, you should find it. I hope you find it interesting. Right, now I'm off for a run......

Wednesday 12 August 2015

A 21st-century peek into ways of helping charities

"When you don't know what you don't know, you don't value it"

Well, obviously, there are plenty of things I didn't know on December 15 2013 that I know now and yes, I value them all (even the fact that my stroke has apparently taken away my ability to distinguish between 'now' and 'know,' lol).

I didn't know (now?), for instance, that 'content creation' is what I'd call journalism and that 'content marketing' is the 21st-century term for what I've been doing all my life, namely writing words and trying to make a living from it.

It was through mutual friends in the networking world that I stumbled on a Facebook group for writers, bloggers, content-marketers and the like called the Content Marketing Academy. The people involved in it seem to be mainly Scottish, so it has widened my contact base enormously.

Through it, I was introduced to a lady called Caroline McKenna. I think we initially met by contributing separately to a discussion on CMA, but I mentioned this blog and she mentioned that she runs a website called charitypeeks.com. That website tries to help smaller charities improve what they do and how they run themselves.

I explained about my charity run to raise money for Different Strokes (shameless plug - feel free to donate at http://uk.virginmoneygiving.com.MartinWarrillow) and the conversation continued to the point where she invited me to be interviewed for a podcast.

That interview took place this morning and I talked about my stroke experience, how I get involved in helping charities (not just DS, also Headway and the Stroke Association) and how I work to promote understanding of stroke. When it goes on the website, I'll give it a proper plug on here.

I left you last week as I was just about to dip a toe back into the frantic world of editorial newsrooms. Since that post, I've done three more half-shifts. I'm thoroughly enjoying it, the people are lovely, the money is going to come in very handy, but it's reminding me that I am nowhere near ready to get back into that mad atmosphere full-time. And given that staff headcounts have fallen massively since I left, I do know that I wouldn't want to now anyway.

Friday 7 August 2015

Going back to an office after six years

This was the week when the light at the end of our financial tunnel may have begun to look less like an onrushing train.

That it came about was another tribute to the power of networking - of knowing as many people as you can, of keeping in touch with as many people as possible and acting quickly when the window of opportunity opens.

Last Thursday, I received an unexpected email from a former colleague. Although we haven't met in person for a while, we have stayed in contact and he knows of my medical situation

He was writing to say that he had been doing some freelance sub-editing work for a newspaper in our area, but was unavailable to them during August. They needed help, so he had recommended me; he didn't need to do that, did he?

He gave me the contact details of the man to speak to and I immediately fired off a CV and covering letter, expressing my interest and explaining my circumstances. Within two hours, they had replied. Could I come in for a chat and a 'trial' this Monday?

So, I was up early on Monday morning to catch a train and work in an office for the first time since December 2009. I was wary because of my stroke-made ability to get tired very quickly. The last thing I wanted to do was fall asleep across my desk.

But the four-hour 'trial' we had agreed went smoothly from my view (they didn't throw any of my work back in my face, lol) and when I got home, I found an email offering me four afternoons a week for the next three weeks through August, with the possibility of more after that.

Sadly,  I didn't feel I could do four afternoons for two reasons; firstly, the physical toll it was likely to take and secondly, the rate they were offering would put me well over the amount I'm permitted to earn while still retaining all of my benefits from the Department of Work and Pensions.

If I could guarantee this work as long-term and permanent, I could probably do without those. But it isn't and I can't. So we've agreed two afternoons a week through August and 'we'll talk about' what happens after that.

What it is, though, is a foot in the door; proof that I can still do 'proper' work as I used to before all this happened. It doesn't solve our problems but it's money we didn't have previously and that can only be good.

Talking of money, the fundraising page for my 5km run to raise money for stroke-survivor charity Different Strokes is now live. It's at http://uk.virginmoneygiving.com/MartinWarrillow and I'd be grateful if you'd take a look. If you feel able to donate, that would be even better.