Foiled by my Own Success

As you all know, if you have read my blog before, I went to Chicago last year to have a stem cell transplant for my CIDP.  And if you haven't noticed, it has worked even better than I expected.  Yesterday I swam over a kilometre at the local pool and today I cycled for an hour.  A year ago I simply wouldn't have had the balance to sit on a bike, let alone pedal, and get somewhere.

But what is it that has foiled me?  Well, when I was first diagnosed with CIDP one of the symptoms I had was that my socks always felt creased in my shoes.  It didn't hurt but it was really annoying.  I used to pull my socks up as far as they would go and and the symptoms would not subside.  I would take off my shoe to see if there was something wrong with the sole or I had something jammed in there, but always to no avail.

Eventually I just simply had to come to terms with the fact that it was a symptom of CIDP and it was not going to simply disappear.  So I decided to just ignore it.  Realistically it was the only option I had available to me and after time I least to accomplish this quite successfully.

Now thinking back with the benefit of hindsight I have to say that this symptom had disappeared after my HSCT, but in my successful attempts to ignore it, I hadn't noticed.  So when I noticed a crease in my left foot I simply decided to ignore it.  And that was my mistake.  I went all day successfully ignoring it.  I walked both kids to school.  I went for a bike ride and was gone for about an hour and a half.  I really had quite an active day.

Finally that evening the annoyance had turned to pain and I took my shoe off to have a look.  Not only was my sock creased up, it had managed to wrap itself up around a small stick.  I had even managed to ignore it for so long a blister had appeared on the side of my foot.   At this point I felt there was not much I could do but laugh.  A year ago I never would have done that much exercise to warrant a blister and before I got sick I would have checked straight away.  I guess I was foiled by my own success!  Stay well:)