Dom Davis (The Blog)

The past few weeks at work have been very bad for my back. Lots of sitting at other people’s desks, using computers at a funny angle and sitting all hunched thanks to the stress of a fairly major release we’re about to do. Sadly it’s got to the stage where Something Must Be Done because it was giving me headaches and causing me pain and discomfort.

The first thing was to sort out my chair at work. Despite having one of the better chairs in the company it lacks all the adjustment I’d like and, while it’s not making things and worse, it’s not improving matters either. Thankfully I have and all singing all dancing chair that puts you in just the right position for sitting in front of computers all day. Since my computer is at work already it made sense for the chair to join it. It’s only been two days but the difference is already noticeable.

Step two was to sort out the knots in my back. This is being achieved by seeing Vince at Cromer Massage who spent an hour last night trying to sort out the mess that is my back. The result is a much improved, if tender pair of shoulders. It’s going to take another couple of sessions to fix things properly but then I expected that. I’m hoping a combination of gym followed by massage on Saturday will kick things back into shape.

So having been mercifully gout free for a while now my knee has started playing up again. Last time this happened the doctor said it was tendinitis caused by walking funny thanks to gout in my toes, but I’m not so sure. Other than driving I’ve not done anything over the past few days that would cause tendinitis to flair up.

Regardless, my knee now hurts like he’ll when I try and bend it. This makes things like getting dressed and walking to work slightly awkward. Still I’m perseveringly and slowly making my way towards the office looking like I’m working for the Ministry of Funny Walks. I’m also having to take a different route as they’re trimming the trees along my more usual route. This is A Good Thing™ as the branches were getting a tad low.

I have a dental appointment this morning which will be fun. I’m rather hoping it’s going to be a quick affair of go in, bet teeth looked at, get told all is OK, leave, get next train to to work. Thankfully my dentist here isn’t big on lecturing you which is something that really put me off dentists. It’s bad enough just having a check up what with lying in the chair with the bright light in your face and the desperate need to swallow while someone pokes about in your mouth uttering cryptic phrases to the dental nurse without then getting a lecture on your oral hygiene. Do I have any fillings? No? Do I need any fillings? No, good, then get off your high horse.

I think what really put me off dentists for life was having two teeth drilled out in order to make space for my wisdom teeth. This procedure was done at a reasonably young age and resulting in… leaving a big gap in my mouth where the teeth should be. Teeth did not move, wisdom teeth still started to become impacted and I still had to have them out. The only saving grace was the, because they were impacted, and needed a general aesthetic to get them out it’s considered a medical, not a dental procedure and my health insurance paid for it.

Fast forward a decade or so (actually when I found out I needed my wisdom teeth out) and I’m being told I needed 3 grands worth of cosmetic work doing. I ignored that, changed toothbrush (to an uber power one), toothpaste brand and 6 months later I had better, albeit still crooked teeth. 3 grand my arse.

On the plus side it’s Friday.

Update: Well that all went fine and was over and done with in less than 10 minutes, which is nice. My teeth are fine and I just had to endure a short torture of a ‘polish’ which seems to involve blasting watering into, and then sucking it out of my mouth while I’m fighting the urge to swallow. All done until January, Friday the 13th :S

I work in an old converted flax mill on the top floor. It’s an open plan office which has some of the original features of the mill, including the roof beams.

Under the eaves, where my desk is situated the beams are an occupational hazard as they come down to head whacking height. Normally at least one person will bang their heads every month and I’ve had my fair share of knocks. Yesterday, however, I didn’t so much as bang my head as clobber it. I was talking to someone so wasn’t looking as I moved to walk away. I was about to head home so I was moving at a fair pace when *BAM*, I hit myself round the head with several thousand tons of building via the medium of a roof beam.

The side of my head took the brunt of the blow and it was all I could do to stand there and just keep blinking. Still, I didn’t pass out or throw up so I figured I was fine, if a little stunned, so I resumed my journey home, albeit with a raging headache.

Rather oddly both sides of my head were tender this morning when I washed my hair. I also have a slight bump on my head to remind me to take care when walking under the eaves. I suspect I’ll be extra careful for the next few months and it’ll be a while before I next clonk my head.

Yesterdays slushy didn’t happen unfortunately due to a lack of sufficiently sugary drink to apply to the machine. I also have gout in my knee which is a tad sore and difficult to walk on.

Now I’m a great believer in modern medicine and will happily throw great handfuls of pills down my throat if it will work. That said I’m not adverse to more traditional treatments to supplement this. For example, cherry juice is supposed to be very good for you when you have gout. It’s also high in sugar if you don’t get the reduced sugar stuff I normally get.

Yup, you can see where we’re going here can’t you? Cherry slushy to wash down a handful of pills. It’s certainly one way to turn a problem into a resolution start point.

That said, having a knee that I can barely walk on is problematic at best, not least due to the fact I’m supposed to be going clubbing this weekend. I shall be guzzling loads of water over the next 24 hours but if it hasn’t improved by tomorrow it may be a trip to the doctors for a slightly more permanent solution that a never ending prescription for NSAIDs to manage the pain and swelling. Hopefully this will be another set of pills to manage the root cause rather than a “no really, change your diet” answer otherwise meal times could become distinctly dull. At least I’ll have slushy to wash everything down with

* Can you see what I did there?

So I worked from home today so I could go to the doctors and get some better pills for my gout. Since this was my second visit with the complaint I was given some pills to treat the symptoms (and the pain), the ability to renew the prescription over the web and a diet sheet. This is not the first diet sheet I’ve had. I’ve also had diet sheets on limiting Oxalate (Oxalic Acid) and monitoring my calcium intake. This new diet sheet is to with purine and limiting the intake of that.

Looking at all the foods that should be avoided listed on the all the diet sheets I have worked out that I am now limited to a single species of Lichen and water. My view is ‘sod that’. Medical science has provided me with the ability to stop the symptoms via the consumption of pills so rather than reducing the diet even further I shall simply change the diet to include these pills

It’s unfortunate that, for the past month now, I’ve been unable to go to the gym due to ill health. Technically I could have gone last weekend but we had family visiting so I saw them instead. This week was going to see me return with a vengeance… until Thursday when my gout returned. No matter, said I, I can still go swimming… or not as on Friday night something violently disagreed with me and put paid to any swimming for 3 days.

Still, there’s always next week. In the mean time I shall continue throwing handfuls of over the counter Voltarol down my throat in the hope the gout will clear up. I fear it’s going to require a course of the full strength stuff though.

Once again the 31st of January is loomin and, once again, letter from Her Majesties Blood Letters and Flesh Collectors are sending threatening letters about the fines and interest if I don’t file my tax return and pay any tax owed¹ by the end in the month.

Unlike the days of yore this years panic is nothing to do with me being too scared², lazy or disorganised to hand my tax return and has everything to do with the management company for my flat and my mortgage company.

My accountant had most of the paperwork she needed 6 months ago. In fact, I was so organised that she was very impressed. Everything was filed neatly, receipts with attached to purchase orders, things were grouped and put into clear plastic pouches and everything put into a folder for her. All that was missing was the details of the service charge and mortgage for my flat which was problematic because they both work December to December. With that I promised to send the information as soon as I had it and we left it at that.

The management company sent the 2010 details through early this month and I emailed those to the accountant with a note saying I knew we were still waiting on the mortgage company and I’d sent it as soon as.

It’s now mid January and still nothing. So I called them. Before being put through to the customer services operator I was told, via the medium of recorded message, that statements were being posted between early January and the 28th of February. Great. So not only do they do their paperwork at a hideously inconvenient time, they then wait until it’s potentially too late to tell me. The girl on the phone told me if I called back with a few details they’d be able to read the information I needed out over the phone. Somehow I can’t help but think that just posting the mortgage statements before the end of January would be cheaper than having staff spend ages on the phone calculating details needed for peoples tax returns. Lunacy.

Anyway, at least for next year³ I know I can call them and will do so May sometime. In the mean time I await my draft accounts and, more importantly, the discovery of how much I owe the tax man. It’s not something I’m looking forward to.

¹The Inland Revenue, unlike the law courts, work on the premise of guilty until proven innocent. If they think you owe them money fines and daily interest are accrued. Ignorance is no excuse. If, in the other hand, you are owed money the onus is often on you to prove it. When you finally receive the cash no interest is paid on it. This explains why people are always so happy to get a tax rebate as if it’s a gift, despite it bring money the government has stolen from you which they’re now returning without interest.

²The Inland Bastard Fucking Revenue (as they were then) and I had a big fight some years back. I won, bur only after much stress and investing several thousand in my accountant over a period of two months. The irony being that I was in the wrong which just goes to prove the system is hideously overcomplicated and prone to exploitation by those with the money to afford very good (and creative) accountants.

³And by next year I, of course, mean this year, in about 6 months time.

There’s a certain irony in the fact that when my procedure finally went ahead it ended up not bring needed. Seems they couldn’t find the stone anywhere which leads them to the conclusion I must have passed it. This is good in some respects and not so good in others.

Despite not actually finding the thing they did go have a good look for it. With more than the average amount of tubing to go hunting through this takes time, causing irritation, especially at the entry point. Suffice to say I was a bit sore when I woke up.

I am now pain free (although to be fair I don’t believe in pain management, I subscribe to pain eradication and just being bolloxed for a few days) and, more importantly for work, able to think my way out of a wet paper bag. This does, unfortunately mean I actually have to go in. Hey ho, at least it’s a short week

Dear Body,

You may have noticed over the past few days that I have been letting you have things like sugar, caffeine and alcohol, albeit in moderation. While you are welcome to view it as a reward for shedding so much weight the reality of the situation is I’ve just been reminding you of those things before Saturday hits.

The good news is that alcohol, which I know is your least favourite of the three, will likely be done in moderation. You will probably have to cope with ‘drunk’, possibly over the course of some hours in the evening, however, I will try to avoid ‘pissed’ and ‘shit faced’, partly because I know you’ll make me pay for days afterwards and make the journey home a waking hell, but mostly because I want to go clubbing afterwards.

Yes, you’re being subjected to an all nighter so brace yourself for epic levels of sugar and caffeine from about midnight onwards. There’s very little you can do about it short of putting me in hospital, and we both know that turns out bad for both of us so there is very little point trying it. If it makes you feel better just consider what crap everyone else is subjecting their bodies to in order to keep going that long. Yeah, doesn’t seem so bad now does it? Besides, you like sugar.

There is also likely to be sleep depravation and, ideally, I’d like continuos operation from 8am tomorrow until midday Sunday. From 8am Sunday you’re welcome to enter a semi-autonomous state and I have secured the wherewithal to provide you with easy to digest entertainment so don’t get all pathetic and try to pass out on me. If you really can’t cope with that then there are alternatives but I think, in the long run, you’re best off just assuming no sleep. It would be an idea, therefore, if you knuckled under and got a really good nights sleep tonight. I shall provide a reasonable bed time tonight plus a chance to lie in and snooze tomorrow.

Perform well and I shall reward you with proper curry and a nice relaxing day on Monday.

Lots of love,

Your Brain