The Blurry Blowout

Deep joy. Hospital day, for diabetic retinopathy testing.
Basically, I have an alarming tendency to lose a whole day of work whenever I have to go and get this done - drops in the eyes, dilation of the pupils which lasts for a solid handful of hours, photographs of the back of the eye, and the Imperial March of doom as the doctor makes a judgment on whether my diabetes has thoroughly fucked my eyeballs up as yet, which would mean having lasers shot into my eyes to repair the damage.

Let me say this as clearly as I can - Fuck. That.
The whole idea of having things in my eyes freaks me right the hell out. I can't even successfully do the whole 'puff of air' test.
In fact, the idea of not succumbing to diabetic retinopathy was one of the big drivers in starting the Disappearing in the first place. Going blind is the thing that scares me secondmost, or possibly thirdmost, in the world. Ironically, I always assumed it would happen some day. Can't tell you how pissed I was to go half-deaf first - that seemed like such an inversion of my understanding with the universe.

Anyhow, today went reasonably swimmingly - I was in and out reasonably quickly. Apparently, there was some diabetic degeneration, but they were happy enough to tell me to more or less fuck off for another year, and 'No Lasers Today, Mum.'

Came home and had nothing to do for a few hours, or rather, no way of doing it, so went to bed with an audiobook while my eyeballs re-adjusted behind their lids.

That...erm...worked. Woke up several hours later with working eyeballs and a need to get my shit into gear to do my daily walk. As I say, I tend to lose most of a day whenever I have to have the retinopathy check - I'm sure there's probably nothing in the drops they give you to dilate your eyeballs that makes you exhausted. But they always seem to hit me that way.

Pretty perversely, having been dilated enough to let in lots of light, I walked by night as usual, like some kind of vampire (ironically listening to Dracula on my headphones), came home and had dinner. I have precisely no idea what happens with tomorrow's weigh-in. Nothing much good, I'm guessing - had pizza yesterday and don't seem to have recovered, weightwise, from the hit of that yet, despite having done the walk twice. Clearly something here has stopped walking - I keep wobbling back and forth over a two or three pound range. What I'm fairly confident is not happening is consistent loss any more. Something may well need to change, or be shifted up a gear, in order to get me off this goddamned borderline, and push me down towards the next one, because now it's starting to get to me. Now it's starting to seem stale - I should be further ahead than this.

So...there's that.

The Becalming Buoyancy

Yep – as predicted, absolutely static for this week’s weigh-in – 18st 1.

That said, I’ve barely walked worth a damn in the last seven days, and though I’ve been semi-regular in terms of walking, that’s been about the only element of my discipline that’s been even close to regular.

Clearly, a tightening of the regime is needed to push me on down into the 17s, as currently, I keep bobbing back up like a round, bald chunk of cork on an ocean of numbers.

Tomorrow sees the return of the incomparable joyfest that is an UberCommute, heading to London and back in a day, with a long meeting inbetween, and Thursday, I’m in training all day, just spitting distance away from my usual Starbucks – am sensing a cheeky decaff or two come lunchtime. But by the end of that day, two important deadlines will have been met and passed, one more will loom massively, but it will allow a greater clarity and a greater Disappearing discipline – less in the way of hiding at Starbucks for long days, more in the way or early morning walking, evening biking, perhaps even a little gym work to begin to capitalise on what d calls ‘the Disappearing Moobs.’

Seeing 18 again was a moment of great joy for me, having not seen it previously for long, mad, out of control months. 18 as a region has been unexpectedly exciting, given that it’s still significantly massive. But I’m done with the excitement now; I want a new thrill. Currently, just 1.25 pounds stand between me and that new thrill of the 17s. Time to refocus, double down and head to the future I want to see.

The Dogged Slog

There's a point, when you're Disappearing, when you actually start to lose track of what day it is. You get into a routine of doing certain things. I'd deviated the last couple of mornings, by not walking, but was back to it this morning, and it's felt very much like business as usual - up to walk, breakfast of McDonalds porridge and a bottle of water. Starbucks for much pleasure-lite coffee. Home for dinner - in this case, one can tomato soup with chilli and three slices brown bread - yes, three, bit too much, probably, but meh. Now I have one more hour before I have to get on the bike for 45 minutes to an hour of Sudoking, then collect d from work, and bed. And that will have been Saturday - much, to be fair, like Friday. I'm not, by any stretch of the imagination, complaining about that, it's been a great productive day, and many things have been obliterated from the To Do List. All I'm saying is that if you're going to Disappear, being able to acclimatise (acclimate, Americans) yourself to a degree of routine which others might find innnnncredibly dull is probably, for some swathes of time, a good trait to have. Tomorrow is Sunday, and I'm not yet sure what I'm going to do. I wouldn't though lay very strong odds against doing something similar all over again - there's a vintage fair in Cardiff that d's interested in checking out (pain threshold permitting after two gruelling twelve-hour shifts back to back). So we'll see.

Err...I do appreciate that precisely the point of today's blog entry does make it less likely to be particularly riveting as a blog entry. Some days are diamonds, I guess - some are just miles walked, and biked, and not a whole lot eaten. One thing I should say is the Mirror from yesterday smashed and buggered off, so that's useful.

Anyhow - on with the work, then on to the bike.