Week 21/2025: The battle with the ongoing health issues
Week of 19 May 2025
This post is wholly researched and written by me. I do not use AI in my writing. I will always bring you my stories in my real human voice.
The ongoing health issues
Physio
Since I hurt my back, things were slowly improving, but all sorts of other things were going on in my hip, my leg and my foot, so my GP suggested going back to the physio.
I went on Wednesday. He agreed with my osteopath that it’s all connected and that singling out one muscle as the cause probably isn’t helpful.
Basically, I said, I wanted a reset of an exercise program that has got bigger and bigger every time I’ve seen a professional. I’m no longer sure what’s helping, what’s needed and what can be ditched.
Quite a lot can, it turns out.
Not the crab walk (IYKYK), but some other, equally unenjoyable, exercises have been removed from the mix leaving me with a much more manageable set, along with the challenge of reconstructing my exercise schedule that has fallen in a bit of a heap.
But it’s cold and dark and I don’t want to go outside in the morning.
And what worked well at 5.30 am in January is not working well at 5.30 am in May.
To be continued . . .
Audiologist
I went to the audiologist a couple of weeks ago, which has become an annual thing the last four or five years. I originally went there because of my tinnitus.
That, for those fortunate enough to have never experienced it, is a phantom ringing (or other sounds) in your ears. Or more accurately, in your head, because it’s not a real sound. There’s several theories about it and a number of possible causes, but the one that was put to me is that if you lose hearing at a certain frequency, your brain invents the tinnitus sound to make up for it.
Basically, your brain has FOMO so it makes stuff up for you to hear.
Great.
I’ve actually had it since I was about 17. To the best of my memory, it started after I’d taken a medication for some illness I don’t remember. I’d lived with it since then without it worrying me too much. It was only four or five years ago, when it suddenly got worse for no apparent reason and started to bother me that I decided to find out what was going on.
The audiologist confirmed that I did have some hearing loss at particular frequencies, which could have been new, and she said this could be the reason for the increased ringing. It could be attributable to perimenopause, because, well just about everything else is, so why not my hearing as well?
At the same time, in response to me telling her I was struggling being in particular noisy environments, she conducted a loudness tolerance test. This showed that I also have hyperacusis. This is an increased sensitivity to sound, which means I can’t tolerate ordinary sounds that most people are comfortable with.
So that was a double diagnosis and it was a bit shit.
But at least she told me I wasn’t making my reaction to noise up. It’s an auditory processing disorder and it’s very real.
I’ve never talked about these things much because I’ve felt embarrassed and ashamed that I react badly to noise and that I have this incessant ringing in my head that drives me up the wall. It feels like something I should be able to cope with and that there’s something wrong with me because I can’t.
It seems like such a trivial thing to let get to me.
But it isn’t trivial at all.
Both of these conditions are making my life miserable and it sucks that I can’t deal with them.
Every time I see the audiologist, I do some tests that give a snapshot on how badly the tinnitus is messing with my life. My scores had previously been around the ‘moderate’ level but just recently, everything seems to have taken a leap into a new fresh hell, and she said it’s time to try some more serious intervention.
So I’m booked in for five appointments to trial various hearing devices, the intention being I think, that they will restore the frequencies I’ve lost and my brain will settle down from making its own noise. I have no idea if it will work but I guess this is how we find out.
A weekend of cats and apes
Cat sitting
In something much more funner, this was my cat sitting weekend, where I got to hang out with Lil Sis & Mr Tall’s cat, Shadow, at their house while they went away.
Day 1 was fine. Shadow spent most of the day (until dinner time) hiding from me.
But we became friends after she realised I was going to feed her, and we had a lovely weekend after that.
She even helped me with my homework.
I got to see the amazing views of Kunanyi and the surrounding hills that you get from this part of town.
Stunning.
Apes
On Saturday I went to the beautiful Peacock Theatre to see Kafka’s Monkey, a one-woman performance by my Alexander Technique teacher Penny McDonald.
I had been looking forward to this for months, following updates from Penny and director Jacob Golding as they brought this show to life.
Synopsis
Kafka’s Monkey is a bold theatrical adaptation of Franz Kafka’s 1917 short story ‘A Report to an Academy’, which follows Red Peter — a former ape who, having been captured and caged by humans, learns to mimic their behaviour in order to survive.
Told entirely through Red Peter’s address to a scientific academy, the play is both a confession and a performance — a lecture laced with pain, absurdity, pride, and loss.
What begins as a tale of transformation quickly becomes a complex meditation on freedom, captivity, assimilation, and the cost of survival in a world not built for you. It is Kafka at his most piercing and prophetic — a creature stripped of its past, forced to play human for the comfort of his captors.
This one-person play was originally adapted for the stage by Colin Teevan and premiered at the Young Vic in London in 2009, in a legendary performance by Kathryn Hunter. Hunter’s portrayal of Red Peter remains one of the most acclaimed solo performances in contemporary theatre history, cementing the piece as a masterwork of physical storytelling and existential drama.
Today, Kafka’s Monkey continues to challenge audiences around the world, asking: when survival depends on performance, can we ever truly be ourselves?
It was an amazing piece of theatre that I feel so privileged to have witnessed.
Penny had worked for many months preparing her body to take on this performance, including undertaking a deep study of apes so she’d be able to move like one and adopt its characteristics. The animal work is something we do regularly in our Alexander classes with Penny and Jacob and this was next level!
I learned a lot about the craft of acting from just this single performance.
It was wonderful.
Summary of the week
Habits I’m tracking
- Go outside in the light first thing (7 days): 5/7
- 15 minutes morning exercise sequence (7 days): 3/7
- Hip exercises (5 days): 0/5
- 2 walks or bike rides or a combination (6 days): 2/6
- Long walk (1 day): 0/1
- Walk 8,000 steps (7 days): 7/7
- 9.00 shutdown & dim lights (6 days): 1/6
- Evening routine (6 days): 3/6
New habits
- Fill water bottle in the morning (4 days): 4/4
- Carry a notebook with me when I walk (7 days): 6/7
- Mid-day journalling (7 days): 3/7
- Thinking time (2 days): 2/4
- Read aloud (7 days): 2/7
What did I learn this week?
When a crow gets sick it goes out and finds some ants, who it pisses off enough to make them start to spray formic acid onto the crow. This is their own defence mechanism and it’s exactly what the crow needs to get rid of the bacteria that’s making it unwell.
What did I notice this week?
This person really doesn’t like bike lanes. (See week 19’s post for another one.)
A circling flock of pigeons when I went out for a walk.
What was the best thing this week?
Hanging out with Shadow. Obviously.
What am I reading this week?
- The Lemongrass Project by Janet Richardson
- The Ode Less Travelled by Stephen Fry
What am I watching this week?
- Masterchef Australia
- Resident Alien
- (Dim) Witted: The 2025 Uni Revue
- Kafka’s Monkey
- Stranger Things Season 1
About The Author
